Hello guys,
New to Curing meat here, I am a Sous Chef by profession and know safe food handling quite well. Recently i have been interested in the curing process without nitrates or nitrites. I understand the concern with Listeria and Botulism but i still want to try the method without.
The first thing i decided to try is Guanciale, fairly small cut of meat. Salt cured 6 of them in my fridge for 6 days flipping them each day. They are currently hanging in my basement right in a specialized room i am going to use just for hanging. Ventilation is good and the average temp is around 48F with the average humidity of 44%.
Basically my question is, are the conditions in this room good enough for what i want to achieve with these Jowls? I have a Humidity controller on the way to bump it up but would it affect the process starting out like this? If so would i want to hang for less then 5 weeks or is there something i should be looking out for such as indicators to humidity? I understand doing a larger cut of meat would require the potassium nitrate but are the smaller cuts of meat something you should be very worried about with botulism and listeria?
Let me know what you guys think i am doing wrong and how to fix anything you guys can see that would effect quality of the final product.
New to Curing meat here, I am a Sous Chef by profession and know safe food handling quite well. Recently i have been interested in the curing process without nitrates or nitrites. I understand the concern with Listeria and Botulism but i still want to try the method without.
The first thing i decided to try is Guanciale, fairly small cut of meat. Salt cured 6 of them in my fridge for 6 days flipping them each day. They are currently hanging in my basement right in a specialized room i am going to use just for hanging. Ventilation is good and the average temp is around 48F with the average humidity of 44%.
Basically my question is, are the conditions in this room good enough for what i want to achieve with these Jowls? I have a Humidity controller on the way to bump it up but would it affect the process starting out like this? If so would i want to hang for less then 5 weeks or is there something i should be looking out for such as indicators to humidity? I understand doing a larger cut of meat would require the potassium nitrate but are the smaller cuts of meat something you should be very worried about with botulism and listeria?
Let me know what you guys think i am doing wrong and how to fix anything you guys can see that would effect quality of the final product.
