Techniques Pancetta/Guanciale

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MarcelNL

MarcelNL

deleted the professional part....so blame taker
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As we currently live in a bit of a deli wasteland and I refuse to pay supermarket premium for below average products I'm going to take the plunge and make my own pancetta as first step to making guanciale (unobtanium anywhere near me).

I'll be repurposing a wine fridge (peltier elements) and plan to start with a pancetta, and then try my hand at Mangalica Guanciale as I found a mangalica farm really close...(I think I can 'retire' when that works out, if it is only half as good as I expect I can open a shop and folks will be queing)

Question at hand is; cure or no cure (Nitrit) in the salt, I find recipes with and without...I'm inclined to not use nitrit.
 
I'd go for guanciale immediately, in my experience even easier and a lot more taste. I quit making pancetta ;)

I typically hang the guanciale in my garage (it is very forgiving) for 3 weeks and prefer to use the seemingly safer approach of using nitrite salt (as nitrite salt is cheap and easy to obtain, I don't see why not to use it ;) ). Often, a wine fridge is an overkill for guanciale if a cool room/space is available.

EDIT:
earlier this month:


(I do cold smoke it, try that as well!)
 
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thanks! OK, so I'll hop in the car and see if I can get the cheek or have to order it...if not it's belly for the first attempt. Probably good to start off with Nitrite indeed...

Problem is we don't have a garage of cooler space in this modern ultra insulated home with geothermal heating.
 
riba said:
(as nitrite salt is cheap and easy to obtain, I don't see why not to use it ;) ).
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Because nitrite consumption is associated with a significantly increased risk of colon cancer. It's one of the things that consistently pops up in the data, and why 'processed meats' are pretty widely considered as unhealthy at this point.

That being said, botulism is not something to joke with. It is possible to make cured meats without nitrites (parma ham for example) but my guess is this requires having really good control of your process. Not something I'd screw around with without doing significant research first.

If I were to go down this adventure I'd also consider making coppa. Quite different from guanciale, but just like guanciale a lot more interesting than pancetta. I tend to always use guanciale & coppa in a 50/50 mix to get the best of both worlds.
 
I used this recipe when I started making my own pancetta. It's pretty heavy on the salt, so adjust to your liking. The result is very flavourful. I also use nitrite salt.
 
For unsmoked whole muscles, nitrite is optional. The muscle (unless it has gashes from butchering) is sterile inside, or near enough so. Clostridium botulinum can't get in there, so there is no risk of botulism. If you happen to have some botulinum bacteria on the surface, that is not a problem because the bacteria need anaerobic conditions to grow.

If you use nitrite for unsmoked muscles, it is for the taste (you get the typical ham flavour with nitrite) and to get a nice pink colour. Without nitrite, you'll end up with a grey product (that is still perfectly edible, just not pink).

If you intend to smoke the meat, things are different. Your smoker is an anaerobic environment because of all the smoke in there, and the meat tends to be in the danger zone (3 ºC to 60 ºC) for several hours. This means that botulinum can grow while the meat is in the smoker, and the safe choice is to add nitrite. If you just hang your meat to dry after curing, without smoking it, the nitrite is optional.

Also keep in mind that drying the meat requires a cool (10-15 ºC) environment with high humidity (70-80%). If the air is drier than this, you will likely get some dry ring near the surface of the meat. One way to deal with that is to seal the meat in vacuum once you have achieved the desired weight loss, and stick into the fridge for a few weeks. That allows the humidity inside the meat to redistribute, and usually gets rid of most of the dry ring.

I generally add nitrite even for unsmoked meats because I like the flavour and to be on the safe side.
 
riba said:
@Jovidah guess it is safest not to eat processed meats at all ;)
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Unless you find them without nitrites. They do exist (parma ham is the most well-known one, but there's also varieties of coppa and iberico hams that won't have nitrite). However they tend to be on the pricier side and you have to really look into the details.
I wholeheartedly admit that I eat charcutterie containing nitrite myself... but really only for financial reasons. If I wasn't poor I'd switch over to cured meats without nitrites in a heartbeat. The data on it is that strong.

Stuff like parmaham also proves that it's perfectly possible to make good quality cured meats that aren't grey or unpalatable. It's probably a lot less trivial to do so, but not impossible.

That being said, if you're just experimenting in a home environment it's very valid to make a conscious choice to use it because it's likely that the risk of botulism is greater than the long-term risk of elevated bowel cancer.
 
@Jovidah So ..... are you recommending a beginner in NL to not use nitritesalt? ;)

In my previous place, I used a cheese cloth to address the dehydration, in my current place it works better without.
 
Jovidah said:
If I wasn't poor I'd switch over to cured meats without nitrites in a heartbeat. The data on it is that strong.
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I'm not sure it's all cut and dried (pun intended). We ingest nitrite all the time, mostly from vegetables. Celery, asparagus, potatoes, arugula, rhubarb, spinach, various types of lettuce, the list goes on.

On a normal diet, 80-90% of nitrite intake is from sources other than charcuterie.

Also keep in mind that the nitrite doesn't hang around forever. It breaks down and creates nitrous oxide, which is what makes the meat stay pink and also prevents bacteria growth. So, if you add nitrite and wait a while, much of it will have been converted into nitrous oxide. You can also add a cure accelerator, such as sodium erythorbate, which makes sure that the nitrite doesn't hang around for long. (I'm not a great fan of that myself, but it's an option.)

At any rate, you would have to eat monstrous amounts of cured meats in order to significantly affect nitrite levels. If you want to avoid nitrite, stop eating celery, lettuce, spinach, and a whole bunch of other veggies…
 
riba said:
@Jovidah So ..... are you recommending a beginner in NL to not use nitritesalt?

In my previous place, I used a cheese cloth to address the dehydration, in my current place it works better without.
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I was just commenting on the fact that nitrite is in fact not entirely without downsides, and that there's definitely a 'why not' to it. However I agree there are also definite downsides and 'why not's' to not using it.
I honestly don't have feel like I have enough experience to recommend anything beyond 'do your research and do it thoroughly'.
If you screw up with baking bread at worst you get a dissapointing bread. If you screw up with curing meats you can end up poisoning yourself (and AFAIK even adding nitrite doesn't completely give you carte blanche to screw around).
 
Jovidah said:
If you screw up with baking bread at worst you get a dissapointing bread. If you screw up with curing meats you can end up poisoning yourself (and AFAIK even adding nitrite doesn't completely give you carte blanche to screw around).
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Agree, it doesn't. It's imperative to work cleanly, keep everything very cold, keep the amount of time the meat is exposed to the air as short a possible, and so on.

Poisoning yourself with nitrite is not easy. You would have to grossly over-dose and then eat a lot of the product to get any problems.

Having said that, mis-dosing cure #1 is no joke. Making cured meats requires some degree of responsibility and knowledge. In particular, there are some videos on YouTube where people suggest that American cure #1 is the same thing as German Nitritpökelsalz (NPS). The two are not the same; cure #1 contains about ten times as much nitrite as NPS; if you make a recipe that calls for NPS and substitute cure #1, you'll seriously OD on nitrite.
 
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In The Netherlands, colorozozout is available which is substantially weaker (0,6%) than Cure #1 (6.25%). Overdosing would result in an unedibly salty piece of meat. DO take this into account when reading recipes and making conversions.

(The recipe I previously posted uses colorozozout)

(Mmm, I should have refreshed the page as @Michi posted the same info ;) )
 
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Spinach contains Nitrate AFAIK, which CAN become nitrite especially when stored too long or if not cooled down and stored cool quickly after cooking.

It's nitrite becoming nitrosamines when burning stuff or eating it that is a probable risk for cancer. Of the nitrate we eat 25% ends up in saliva the rest leaves through the kidneys, of that 25% about 20% (which means 4-8% of all nitrate) becomes nitrite, which CAN become glucosamines in the stomach/ bowel in combination with protein.

I have the literature and two books with recipes to follow, can and will do the math if a recipe calls for Cure #1, have drug dealer scales for my espresso habit so I'm pretty sure that following recipes whilst knowing the differences between nitrate, nitrite, salt and colorososalt it should all end well :)

Salpeter Nitrate and colorososalt are ordered, hygrometers as well and the fridge is cooling down...now 'just'to hit the mother lode and source unfrozen Mangalica cheeck...the meat vending machine of the grower was almost empty so I'll contact them directly to see how I can place a cheecky order.
 
already saw that nitrate is cheaper at higher volume, should never have thrown out the last bit I had left from making firework as a kid...good news is that it still can be bought
 
That's how I ended up with 25 kg of colorozozout

(I always warn wrt conversions. If you are aware it's very trivial but a lot of people with different backgrounds are reading the internet)
 
I'm talking about the pure KNO3 stuff, you know, add some charcoal, managanese, a bit of sugar, a pinch of aluminum granulate, light it and it goes BANG

;-)
 
it probably serves well to keep the paving in the garden from icing in, while at the same time cured the green much that tends to grow on it in winter
 
Michi said:
At any rate, you would have to eat monstrous amounts of cured meats in order to significantly affect nitrite levels. If you want to avoid nitrite, stop eating celery, lettuce, spinach, and a whole bunch of other veggies…
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My understanding is the nitrates aren’t the problem. Nitrites react with compounds in red meat to form carcinogens which is the problem as MarcelNL mentions.

And it sounds like cured vs uncured is the same health concern as they both use nitrates but from different sources.
 
I've got a roll of pancetta hanging right now. My first attempt. I used this recipe.

https://leitesculinaria.com/7054/recipes-homemade-pancetta.html
Seems good go far. A couple more days hanging and it will be done.

The hardest part for me was getting a place in my house that is the right temp and humidity, which I read should be 50-60 degrees F and 60-80% humidity. Mine is hanging in my basement bathroom (that no one uses). Blocked off the heat vent, put in a humidifier, and left the exhaust fan on. Sitting stable at 60F and 65% humidity.
 
I've done veal cheeks in PX sauce in the past and can recommend it. Way more interesting than your standard wine saucery.
 
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