When I wrote about the Kasseler style smoked loin, I said that I’d make some more but use a dry cure rather than a brine.

I started two last month; I’ll smoke one and leave one unsmoked as my wife, Pauline, is not too keen on smoked food.

We’ll use it sliced in place of ham and it may even find its way into the odd bacon butty as it’s a loin version of US bacon! I’ll not be stopping making real British bacon any time soon though – have no fears about that!

The ingredients for 1 kg of pork are:

16gm Salt (I used sea salt)
10gm White sugar
2.4gm Cure #1
0.3gm Crushed juniper berries
0.3gm Crushed bay leaves
0.3gm Crushed coriander seeds

Use the cure pro-rata for other weights of meat or use the calculator at the bottom of this page.

The process is simplicity itself:

Weigh the ingredients and mix them together.

Apply 90% of the cure mix to the meat and 10% to the fat.

Rub the cure in.

Either vac-pac the meat or place it into food grade plastic bags/cling film/food wrap/saran wrap.

Place it in the fridge for 14 days giving it a rub occasionally through the wrapping.

Rinse it and place it back in the fridge to dry uncovered for a day.

Either hot smoke it – start it at 40 – 50°C until it is nicely dry then raise the temperature and apply smoke. Gradually increase the temperature of the smoker to around 80°C and cook the meat until it has an internal temperature of 70°C. Hold it at this temperature for at least 2 minutes.

Cool and refrigerate before slicing.

You could also cook it without smoke or even cold smoke it. I like it hot smoked with maple or alder though.

It could, of course, be smoked at higher temperatures; my preference is for a longer slower cook as I think that this makes for a moister product.