Curing Meat
This morning I found on my Facebook wall an article from yesterday's New York Times Food section. It talks about home-curing meats and how simple it is. It encourages people to try it out, and includes some links to recipes at the bottom. To me, though, the times it gives in which to consume the results seem ridiculously short. I mean, three weeks in the fridge for home-cured bacon? Seriously?
There was a time when every rural Galician family worth its salt had home-cured pork hunkered down in a special chest in layers of salt. Other pieces, such as hams and sausages would grace the chimney just above the open fireplace, the lareira. It was the only way to eat meat during the year without refrigerators, freezers, or local supermarkets and butchers. That meat would last months without refrigeration.
Now, few families butcher their own pig, and those that do generally freeze the meat. It's much faster and easier than salting down everything. Now, the liver, a delicacy to most, doesn't have to be eaten the same day. It used to be eaten on butchering day because it wouldn't keep. Now it can be frozen. Fresh pork used to be eaten in the days following. It was an early-winter treat. Now it's something to be had year-round. But salted and cured pork used to be the meat mainstay of most homes once.
My mother took it upon herself to cure hams and sausages in our Boston triple decker between thirty and forty years ago. I remember them hanging in our little pantry, with paper bags stretched on the floor beneath to catch the dripping fats. There was no necessity for it, but my mother was nostalgic for the cured pork of home, so she decided to go through the trouble. I think she bought most of the necessary objects in the Italian North End, such as the tripe and string for the sausages. I remember when she finally said the hams were just right to eat. I would go in with the knife and just swipe slices from wherever I could reach to cut. I still remember the dark, too-salty cut close to the surface, that would grow pinker and mellower as the meat started to get pared closer and closer to the bone. The sausages, however, I didn't like as much because my mother had little patience to cut the meat and fat fine enough. So the chourizos were chunkier than they should have been, though still savory. Childhood memories of home food.
Those meats would last a long time hanging in our pantry. And now a food writer for The New York Times says to keep such meat only a few weeks in the fridge? He should visit rural Galicia.
There was a time when every rural Galician family worth its salt had home-cured pork hunkered down in a special chest in layers of salt. Other pieces, such as hams and sausages would grace the chimney just above the open fireplace, the lareira. It was the only way to eat meat during the year without refrigerators, freezers, or local supermarkets and butchers. That meat would last months without refrigeration.
Now, few families butcher their own pig, and those that do generally freeze the meat. It's much faster and easier than salting down everything. Now, the liver, a delicacy to most, doesn't have to be eaten the same day. It used to be eaten on butchering day because it wouldn't keep. Now it can be frozen. Fresh pork used to be eaten in the days following. It was an early-winter treat. Now it's something to be had year-round. But salted and cured pork used to be the meat mainstay of most homes once.
My mother took it upon herself to cure hams and sausages in our Boston triple decker between thirty and forty years ago. I remember them hanging in our little pantry, with paper bags stretched on the floor beneath to catch the dripping fats. There was no necessity for it, but my mother was nostalgic for the cured pork of home, so she decided to go through the trouble. I think she bought most of the necessary objects in the Italian North End, such as the tripe and string for the sausages. I remember when she finally said the hams were just right to eat. I would go in with the knife and just swipe slices from wherever I could reach to cut. I still remember the dark, too-salty cut close to the surface, that would grow pinker and mellower as the meat started to get pared closer and closer to the bone. The sausages, however, I didn't like as much because my mother had little patience to cut the meat and fat fine enough. So the chourizos were chunkier than they should have been, though still savory. Childhood memories of home food.
Those meats would last a long time hanging in our pantry. And now a food writer for The New York Times says to keep such meat only a few weeks in the fridge? He should visit rural Galicia.
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