Thread 21562715

Wanted to find a way to eat meat I've cured myself, so I tried the fridge method.

Super simple
1. Cover the meat in salt for 24h in fridge.
2. Wash the meat with clean water and pat dry.
3. Weigh the meat exactly.
4. Figure out a way to hang them in the fridge so that they don't touch anything or each other much. (The pic is after I moved them when they were ready.)
5. Wait until their weight drops 30%, whenceforth they are ready to eat.

I just wanted to gush how happy I am with the taste and how pleasing it is to eat your self cured meat. They're a bit overly salty and tough, but that is probably because I was worried about messing it up, and was really heavy with the salt cover, and I let them sit for 2 months straight before checking the weight. All had hit the 30% drop, some much more.

Have you tried to cure meats without any fancy vacuum sealers or special rooms?

>>21562715 (OP)
looks pretty gross desu. How does it taste? Can we get a close up of one of the pieces? And why did you do this?

>>21562715 (OP)
fuck yeah mold meat

>>21562744
Because I love the taste of dried meat, and the taste is like any fancy thing you'd find in a store, but no immaculate veins of fat unfortunately. The pieces being just steak cuts is also suboptimal. Would be better if they were thicker. Might try something like that next.

Anon if its a decicated fridge for curing consider getting an inkbird and cheap humidifier to maintain temp and RH

>>21562748
I don't think there's any mold. The salt just was sucked into the surface layer and then it crystallises.

>>21562787
It's not, that was the point, wanted to do it without fancy equipment.

>>21562788
Anon it is geotricium mold
Pic rel is a dry aged striploin i did and no salt whatsoever was added

>>21562715 (OP)
>Have you tried to cure meats without any fancy vacuum sealers or special rooms?
yes

>>21562792
I don't know what all is required for no-salt dryaging. This salt thing was something I found a lot documentation on online. Often they do it with vacuum bag but this is also possible.
And what part is supposed to be the mold? There was absolutely no off taste or bad effect from it.

>>21562800
Often they do the initial salting with a vacuum bag I mean. They call it equilibrium salting or something.

>>21562800
I simply use dry age bags, i could use my cheese aging fridge but that runs too warm, idk about the vacuum bag as is because it isn't porous I believe so you won't get proper moisture loss but i could be wrong on that, as for the mold its looks like geo in some of the non heavily salted areas. those kinda molds are a non issue though because they are beneficial and fight off bad ones its natural part of curing anything and making most cheeses

>>21562798
Did it work? Did you use salt or no?

>>21562825
Yes. Yes.

>>21562715 (OP)
Oh yeah, and a potentially important note about the salt: it's best to use salt without any anti-caking agents or anything else besides salt. I found some unprocessed sea salt.

>>21562812
I probably looked at that method as well, but immediately when I saw that I'd need to buy a special bag, I abandoned that route. I'm sure it's better though.

>>21563029
>meat in plastic
>better

>>21562788
sir that looks absolutely vile

>>21562788
I don't think it should be black

>>21564953
Drying typically darkens meat, like what happens with jerky.

meh I'd try it.. about 30mins after watching you eat some.

>>21562715 (OP)
>>21562783
>>21562788
holy fuck this is disgusting

>>21565024
Come on it's not that bad, look at the pretty slices

>>21565051
This actually doesn't look bad at all