Equilibrium Brine & Cure - Pork Chops

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Tatoosh
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Equilibrium Brine & Cure - Pork Chops

Post by Tatoosh » Tue Dec 29, 2015 09:09

Background:

I have been doing a cured pork chop, done via a brine, and then smoked for some time. My problem was variable results. This was due to a couple of factors. First is I have been using the traditional gradient brine aka pickle which simply means there is more salt in the brine than I want in my pork chop, so I have to use time in the brine as a factor to control saltiness. And it is hard to know for sure when a pork chop has picked up just the right amount. I also injected the brine into the chops in three spots per chop to ensure a faster, more complete cure.

And it has Cure #1 (also known as Pink Salt #1, Prague Powder #1, Instacure #1) which is primarily salt with 6.25% sodium nitrite. I used this for both appearance, taste, and food safety. While I started out hot smoking my chops until done, I switched to a sous vide approach for better control of the cooking temperature. So I moved from a hot smoke to a warm smoke or even a cold smoke using the A-Maze-N pellet smoker.

After smoking, I'd give the chops a quick exterior sear, let them cool, and vacuum pack them for sous vide cooking at 141F/60.5C, the temperature recommended by Douglas Baldwin. The control is like the gradient brine - time. In this case it is based on the thickness of the meat. For 1 to 1 1/2 inch chops, I would end up sous vide cooking for 1 1/2 to 2 hours.

When they worked, they were superb. When they didn't, I was most often embarrassed by the saltiness. And I did learn to give them more time in the fridge and freezer to let the salt finish diffusing after they came out of the sous vide bath. That often helped.

Equivalent Brine (aka EQ Brine)

I ran into EQ curing for bacon and pastrami. I liked the idea that I could not get my product too salty. I do bacon using Ruhlman's basic rub/cure and guide but it is a gradient rub, if I may. The end bacon was simply too salty. I found ways to deal with that. But not having that as a problem was attractive, even if it meant more time to cure. And an EQ brine should not be any more complex than an EQ dry cure.

But my salt percentages were far below what we normally see in a brine for curing meat. The numbers I noticed here was 5% salinity as the lowest effective brine. But I am aiming for 2% in my finished chop - slightly less salty than my EQ bacon which is 2.5% And that led me to a safety concern. I started hunting all over for numbers necessary to slow down or stop common microbial action and was a bit surprised what I found.

Salt concentrations needed to kill:
Salmonella: 3%C.
Botulinum: 10%
Listeria: 12%

So a weak brine is not stopping a number of potential bad actors in the food world. However, sodium nitrite in the Cure #1 helps with Botulinium and the chill temperature limits most of the others as well. And we need to present bacteria with a number of barriers if possible. So salt is not the only solution (no pun intended).

With an EQ brine - I am matching the green weight of the meat, minus bone weight, plus the water. The easy way is if the brine is the same weight as the meat to be cured. If I have a kilo of pork chop to cure and a liter of water - I simply need my starting salinity to be twice the target after curing. In this case if I was shooting for 2% finish, I needed 4% in my brine to start. After the salt (and other ingredients - sugar & sodium nitrite) diffuse into the meat, it should hit an equilibrium of 2% - half in the brine, half in the meat.

Now, I noticed here and else where that somehow you folks manage to use much less water per pound or kilo of meat. I'm not sure why I can't get that to work for me. But I end up using a brine twice the amount of meat in order to be sure the chops are submerged. It also allows me to use the saliometer to check the progress. A quick read of the brine in subsequent days tells me exactly how much salt has moved from the brine into the chops. And my target of 7.5 to 8 degrees on the saliometer lets me know when I'm done without having to weigh my chops. How handy! But I need to do my math for the 2:1 ratio of brine to green meat weight when figuring salt and cure.

My single most pressing problem is getting the right amount of Cure #1 for the brine and then figuring the amount of salt it adds to the brine as well. Since these chops can end up cold smoked, and do end up vacuum packed, I want to be at the minimum of the acceptable limit for sure. That is generally 120 ppm, I think. If I was simply using it for flavoring, then no lower limit would apply. I just need to store it appropriately.

Once I figure out the math - both for pounds and ounces as well as kilograms, I will build a spread sheet that makes it easier to calculate correct measures. Which vary significantly depending on where you look. Here it is up to 8 Tablespoons of Cure #1 per gallon (200 ppm). Other sites say 4 Tablespoons with experienced hobbyists chiming in that 3 Tablespoons is the common amount per gallon of water. How perplexing! It appears to me that one level Tablespoon is going to be about 25 ppm using the numbers here. If I go for 120 ppm as my minimum, I can look at 5 tablespoons per gallon to be 125 ppm.

Note, I still plan to inject my chops to insure a more even cure over a short period. I will do this by diluting the brine to the target percentages for injecting.

What I hope to end up with is a perfect pork chop - impossible to be too salty, lightly cured, smokey and a bit hammy, but moist as possible. It is a pleasure to serve them when they are right and I hope my new approach will get me on target. I've got 14 chops in two different brines now - slightly adjusting the salt in each as a test. Time will tell. I'll let you know what happens and I look forward to any comments on the brine aspects of this.
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redzed
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Post by redzed » Wed Dec 30, 2015 07:47

Well I have to give you credit, and you have my admiration in your determination to create the perfectly salted pork chop. Most people would just go out and buy a Kasseler. :lol:

I know that the application of equilibrium brining is growing among restaurant chefs and something that passionate hobbyists might want to consider. Being old school, where I learned gradient brining and curing from my father, using such a small amount of salt just does not seem right. Yet I know it can work well. Safety, however, is a concern. And the only places that I have read about equilibrium brining is on the various modernist cooking forums and blogs and youtube videos. Are there any scientific articles on it in meat journals or published studies? Does the USDA have any guidelines on it?
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