Long-form guides on charcuterie, equilibrium curing, chamber builds, and the patient craft of preserved meats.
Begin with the GuidesEquilibrium cure ratios, salt percentages, and weight-loss tracking — explained in the relevant guides. Always verify your own scale.
Most prosciutto problems trace back to one of four causes: salting that was too warm or too short, a chamber that ran too dry, a chamber that ran too wet and still, or a leg that simply never lost enough weight. The good news is that several are recoverable if you catch them early — […]
The rule for choosing between curing salts is short: use Cure #1 for anything you will cook or cold-smoke and eat fairly soon, and Cure #2 for anything air-dried over weeks or months without cooking. Cure #1 (Prague Powder #1) is 6.25 percent sodium nitrite. Cure #2 (Prague Powder #2) adds about 4 percent sodium […]
Bacon is the cure I tell every beginner to start with, because it is forgiving in flavour and unforgiving in exactly the ways that teach you the craft. The honest answer to “how do I cure bacon?” is this: you apply a measured amount of salt and cure #1 (6.25% sodium nitrite) to a pork […]
For a home curer, boneless prosciutto is the safer, faster, more forgiving choice, and bone-in is the traditional, slower, harder one. A boned and netted leg finishes in 5 to 9 months and sidesteps the deep bone zone where most whole-leg cures fail; a bone-in leg takes 12 to 18 months and rewards patience with […]
An aw meter measures water activity directly — the free water that decides whether a cured piece is safe — instead of making you infer it from weight loss. True laboratory meters use a chilled-mirror or capacitance sensor and cost from several hundred to a few thousand dollars, which puts them out of reach for […]
Preserving confit in fat works by excluding oxygen: a solid fat seal over cooked meat stops the surface oxidising and blocks the aerobic moulds and bacteria that need air. Fully submerged in a clean sealed container, confit keeps several weeks to about two months in the fridge. What the fat does not do is make […]
