Immerse fresh-cut meats in homemade salt cures for saftey.
Finding commercial meat cures without nitrates is difficult because as the National Center for Home Food Preservation suggests, "meats preserved without nitrates are more susceptible to spoilage, flavor changes and should be frozen until used." A nitrate is a sodium-based chemical preservative that saves the color and inhibits growth of botulism. In recent years, however, the general public has become cautious of nitrate-cured meats in light of the trend to eat natural and/or organic. Add this to my Recipe Box.
Country Curing
Use care when curing meats without nitrates.
No-nitrate meat cures are traditional, old-fashioned or "country curing" methods, such as brines of salt and cane sugar. Also, canning, smoking and dehydration preserve fresh meat. According to the website Sugar Mountain Home, meats should be cured when it is cold outdoors or in a refrigerator. The temperature should not go above 100 degrees or heat will destroy "flavor causing enzymes" and cause spoilage.
A common cure consists of salt, which cures the meat, and sugar, which provides flavor and keeps it moist. Saltpeter, which is a natural mineral nitrate, retains the color, according to the website.
Salt Cures
Salt is the active curing ingredient for meat. Sugar provides flavor.
Other sugar/salt cures use white or light-brown sugar and sea salt, which are combined and rubbed on fresh meats. All of this work must be done immediately after slaughter and in cool temperatures, and the meat must be stored in cool temperatures for a length of time. Upon completion of the cure, the meats may be placed in a smokehouse for a period of time.
Vegetable Juice Experiments
Experiments with different concentrations of vegetable juice and vegetable powder are the closest the food industry has come to replacing nitrates in meat preservatives. These products are used in a brine because they are known to contain lots of naturally occurring nitrates. Experiments show concentrations of 0.20 percent vegetable-juice powder and starter culture containing Staphylococcus carnosus were shown to be comparable to a sodium-nitrite meat cure. However, these results are based on food-industry studies and the cures are not available to the general public.
Prepackaged Cures
The trend among health-conscious individuals is to buy and cook natural and organic foods. This trend includes the type of meat on the dinner table. In an effort to eliminate unnatural chemicals from diets, meat eaters are looking for alternatives. No-nitrate meat cures are preparations not generally prepackaged because they consist only of salt and cane sugar, which are readily available. In prepackaged cures, some type of nitrate is used, even if it is a natural nitrate such as saltpeter, which preserves color.
Tags: meat cures, without nitrates, because they, cane sugar, cool temperatures