![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
madbakerThis week's Resolution Recipe: The keeping of Lard after my Lady Marquesse Dorsets way.
1.5 pounds pork belly, skin off
salt to cover
brine: 8 ounces salt
4 cups water
Line a non-reactive tray just larger than the pork belly with salt and lay the belly on top. Layer it with more salt. Cover the tray with plastic wrap and refrigerate for two weeks, changing out the salt and flipping the belly every two to three days. After two weeks remove the belly and rinse it, patting it dry gently. Dissolve the eight ounces salt into the water to make a brine. Pour into a large Ziploc bag and lay in the belly. Refrigerate for six weeks, changing out the brine every two weeks.
Remove the belly, rinse and pat it dry. Keep it for use as an ingredient where salt pork would be used.
The recipe produces an intensely salt pork: this helps preserve the meat. When used as an ingredient, it also contributes salt and fat to other recipes. It is too salty to be eaten on its own, however. Like salt fish, it must be soaked for a day before using.
I started with a skin-off belly, which allowed me to skip the first few steps. From experimentation a brine that is 20-25% salt by weight is sufficient to cause a fresh egg to float.
"Well water" was often considered less healthy than fresh running river water.
Sources
Peachey, Stuart, ed. The Good Huswifes Handmaide for the Kitchin. New York: Stuart P, 1992. ISBN 1-85804-003-5.
What worked: Ain't no bacteria growing on this hunk of pig. I test-fried a small piece and a salt lick spread on the cast iron.
What didn't: The meat grayed somewhat on the outside. If I make it again I'd add a small amount of sodium nitrite to keep the meat pink and pretty.
Will I make it again? Probably not - I'd be more likely to use commercial salt pork as a substitute for this after it's been de-salted. Also, there's a parallel recipe in Martino that's a lot less work:
What I'm reading: CM Woolgar, Food in Medieval England: Diet And Nutrition.
Take a fat hog and salt him, and when he is through cold, quarter him, and take all the bones and flesh from the fat: and then take the fat of the said hog, and couch it in fayre dry white salt, and so keepe it two or three dayes: then change it again into faire drie white salt, everie thirde or fourth day, and at the fourteen daies end, take faire cold water and white salt and make a verie strong brine, so that your brine be made so strong that it will beare an egge almost cleane above the brine, and put it in a faire close vessell: then take the said Lard and lay it in the said brine, so that the brine cover it over: so change it into new brine everie fourteen daies, for the space of sixe weeks, and after that it needeth not be changed. But the brine may not be made of wel water. (The Good Huswifes Handmaide for the Kitchin, 1588)
1.5 pounds pork belly, skin off
salt to cover
brine: 8 ounces salt
4 cups water
Line a non-reactive tray just larger than the pork belly with salt and lay the belly on top. Layer it with more salt. Cover the tray with plastic wrap and refrigerate for two weeks, changing out the salt and flipping the belly every two to three days. After two weeks remove the belly and rinse it, patting it dry gently. Dissolve the eight ounces salt into the water to make a brine. Pour into a large Ziploc bag and lay in the belly. Refrigerate for six weeks, changing out the brine every two weeks.
Remove the belly, rinse and pat it dry. Keep it for use as an ingredient where salt pork would be used.
The recipe produces an intensely salt pork: this helps preserve the meat. When used as an ingredient, it also contributes salt and fat to other recipes. It is too salty to be eaten on its own, however. Like salt fish, it must be soaked for a day before using.
I started with a skin-off belly, which allowed me to skip the first few steps. From experimentation a brine that is 20-25% salt by weight is sufficient to cause a fresh egg to float.
"Well water" was often considered less healthy than fresh running river water.
Sources
Peachey, Stuart, ed. The Good Huswifes Handmaide for the Kitchin. New York: Stuart P, 1992. ISBN 1-85804-003-5.
What worked: Ain't no bacteria growing on this hunk of pig. I test-fried a small piece and a salt lick spread on the cast iron.
What didn't: The meat grayed somewhat on the outside. If I make it again I'd add a small amount of sodium nitrite to keep the meat pink and pretty.
Will I make it again? Probably not - I'd be more likely to use commercial salt pork as a substitute for this after it's been de-salted. Also, there's a parallel recipe in Martino that's a lot less work:
How to prepare rendered pork lard. Take some fresh pork fat or fresh lard and cut into pieces the size of a chestnut, and add a generous amount of salt. Then crush well and let set for a day; and then place in a pot over heat; and for a hundred librae, add ten or twelve jugs of water and let boil slowly until thoroughly melted. Then strain the rendered lard through a stamine; and very slowly scum the top so that you do not remove the water below, and place the rendered lard in a clean jar and keep in a cool place. With this method, it will keep for a year.
What I'm reading: CM Woolgar, Food in Medieval England: Diet And Nutrition.
