Do you love jerky?
If I told you there was something that TASTES BETTER and was EASIER TO MAKE than jerky, would you do it?
Dry curing meat creates a delicious food that melts in your mouth and has exquisite old world flavor.
The difference between jerky and dry cure is that you preserve meat to make jerky by dehydrating thin slices. It is fairly labor intensive to slice it up and dehydrate it, especially if you are trying to do large quantities.
For dry cure, you preserve meat by salting whole muscles, which draws out a fraction of the moisture and causes the right type of beneficial bacteria to grow. After a number of weeks, when it has lost 30% of its fresh weight (but is still moist inside), it is ready to eat.
You do not have to use preservatives, nitrates, nitrites, Prague powder, or "pink salt" to make dry cured meat. Just pure, non-iodized salt, and spices, if desired. I choose to use himalayan salt (which is confusingly sometimes called pink salt, but it IS different than the "pink salt" used specifically for curing meat). You can use sea salt or kosher salt if you choose.
I typically dry cure around 40 pounds of meat from every pig that I process. It only takes a few minutes to weigh the meat, then calculate and weigh out the salt and spices, massage them onto the meat surfaces, and stick them back in the fridge.
Any large hunk of meat can be dry cured. This specific recipe is for the coppa muscle, but feel free to experiment with other cuts such as loin or ham. 3 lbs is the smallest sized portion that responds well to dry curing, but you can do an entire ham.
The hard part is waiting several weeks for it to cure. You can't rush the curing process--and you wouldn't want to, because TIME is responsible for the delicious flavors created in dry cure that you simply cannot achieve in jerky that was dehydrated quickly.
Dry cured meat is a beautiful example of Slow Food.
The process is very similar to aging a wheel of cheese; the flavor of the meat develops during its aging time just like the flavor of fresh curds change and develop as cheese ages.
Prosciutto and salami are two types of dry cure that you might have heard of.
Cappicola
Cappicola is hands down my favorite way to snack on pork.
Cappicola is made from the coppa muscle, which is the loin of the neck. You rub it with a serendipitous mixture of salt and spices that, combined with time, transform raw meat into a work of art.
If you have bought a whole or half hog I highly recommend you consider asking the butcher to bone out the coppa muscle so you can make cappicola. Mention it while they are going over the shoulder portion of the cut sheet with you.
You will be so happy you did!
When you dry cure meat, you need to do a little calculating so that you get a pleasing amount of salt, rather than too much which will gag you.
Take a kitchen scale, put a dish on it to hold the meat while you weigh it, and THEN turn on the scale. This is called "tare"ing it. It should show 0 lbs/oz, even though the container is on it, because you turned it on with the container in place. This way, when you add your coppa to see how much it weighs, you don't have to worry about subtracting the weight of the container.
Weigh your coppa. You will make your life easier if you weigh it in metric rather than lbs/oz. Most scales switch back and forth from oz to gr by pushing the "on" button while it is at 0.
Calculate 3% of its weight. If the coppa weighed exactly 1 kg (1,000 grams), you would need 30 grams of salt. The formula for figuring percent salt is:
(weight of meat in gr) x .03 = (weight of salt)
A typical coppa might weigh 2,600 grams. In that case,
2,600 gr meat x .03 = 78 grams salt
This is just an example. Please weigh your meat and do the calculation based on its actual weight.
The other ingredients do not have to be measured precisely. Calculate the amount of salt to use, then just use these set amounts of other spices to mix with the salt for the cure.
For one coppa:
3% the weight of the meat in non-iodized salt
1 tsp sugar
1.5 tsp black pepper
1 tsp ground juniper berries
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1 Tbs paprika
1/2 tsp red pepper (chipotle or cayenne)
Once you have weighed your meat and determined the correct amount of salt, mix the salt and other spices together. Rub the coppa with the spice mixture on all sides. Put it in a plastic tub in the fridge.
After a couple of days, pour off the juices that have been drawn out. Flip the meat and put it back in the fridge on a plate. Do not add more salt. Ensure that there is air circulation around the meat, which means that it sits on a shelf in the fridge, not confined in a drawer.
Every week or two, flip the meat. This helps it not grow mold on its surface. Although, if it does grow a little mold, it is still perfectly safe to eat (a state meat inspector told me that, and I have done it many times).
Let it age in the fridge for 5 weeks.
When your cappicola has finished curing it will have shrunk by about a third of its original size. The outside might look gnarly, but beliand you finally get to eat it, cut a few paper thin slices off the end. They will melt in your mouth.
It is now shelf stable and can be left on the counter or hung with a sharp stainless steel hook, rather than being stored in the fridge. It tastes best at room temperature.
Cappicola, like all dry cure, is eaten raw. You don't need to cook it.
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