Salted, smoked and cooked pork loin.

[jens49]

I need help on this one.
Making smoked cooked pork loin/kasseler or whatever.
Pork loin trimmed to filet. EQ salted at 1.8 % for around two weeks. Temperature < 5° C.
Dried a few days in the fridge before smoking for 90 minutes at approx. 45° C. Rested overnight and sous vide at 62° C for 2 hours.
Most of the time the results are fine but sometimes the meat comes out fall apart crumbly!
I have tried longer and shorter salting times. Ditto sous vide times.
Once in a while it just doesn’t work.
Just can’t figure out what goes wrong. Is it really the quality of the meat?

[michi]

I have no idea what's happening. But, if the process is pretty much the same each time, the only variable left is the meat, so I'd put it down to that.

[Maxell]

Try to make injections with 10% brine in the amount of 10% of the weight of the meat. Leave overnight and you can vacuum-pack and continue as before.

[jens49]

I will absolutely try your suggestion next time. Thank you Maxell.
Michi, I can follow your logic. Just amazed that the quality of the meat can vary that much. My guess would be 3 times failure out of the last 10 with commodity pork.

[michi]

Michi, I can follow your logic. Just amazed that the quality of the meat can vary that much. My guess would be 3 times failure out of the last 10 with commodity pork.

Hmmm… Maybe the meat was injected with water to begin with? If so, I expect that would make a difference. I've made bad experiences with bargain discounted roast cuts in the past, where I ended up with ham that wasn't properly firm.

[jens49]

Michi, you may be right. But there were no labels that said it was injected. Redzed recommended I inject some brine. S0?
It was bargain meat. But maybe a bad bargain...