Syzygies

The reason we use nitrites is to prevent botulism' date=' a larger cut cant reach the food safety zone internally in the required time if cooking or smoking at low temps for extended periods of time.[/quote']

Hmm, are you saying that the five days of brining is worse than five days in a cryo pack at your butcher wet-aging, before identical BBQ technique?

Put differently, true cold smoking could be 150 F or lower, inducing botulism whether one brined first or not. Cooking a butt or loin roast at 225 F, one would seem by overwhelming empirical evidence to be safe, whether one brined first or not.

So if after brining, I plan to cook the meat exactly as if I had not brined it, to eat immediately, then I don't worry about instacure. Anyone cold-smoking should use instacure, and know what they're doing.

I do take botulism very seriously. Traditional sauerkraut methods risk botulism. I ferment my own hot sauce using kimchee starter, and I use a $100 pH meter and a few tablespoons of white vinegar to make sure my vats start out at a pH below risk. (One can barely taste the requisite acidity, I wonder if this would work in a brine, too?)

And I don't worry about botulism, if I'm cooking a brined piece of meat exactly as I would have cooked it, unbrined. Am I wrong? (I'm still here, knock on wood...)

In Glenn's honor, here's a brining mini-thesis:

I'm a huge fan of making "house-cured ham" out of any part of a pig. As Glenn points out, it's tricky achieving penetration on the bigger pieces of meat. (I find that pictures of great 'cue helps, YMMV.)

A farm supply store sells syringes meant for injecting livestock, they work better than any BBQ-specific supply, for injecting brine. Cheaper, too.

"House-cured ham" need not be as salty or vile as commercial ham, and need not include preservatives if it will be eaten or frozen quickly. It's the happy medium between ham and not-ham, and it's my favorite cooked meat these days.

The two books that have the best information on this are "Cooking by Hand" by Paul Bertolli, and "The Zuni Cafe Cookbook" by Judy Rodgers. They differ, but a mix of their opinions works great. I can summarize their advice as follows:

Paul Bertolli urges one to compute the salt in a brine, taking the meat into account. It's far easier than it sounds: Count the weight of the meat as 60% to 80% water, depending on bones and fat, include this as part of the total water, and add to the total water 3% sea salt, 1-2% by taste sugar.

One can go nuts googling various conversions between quarts, liters, pounds, grams (a spreadsheet does help if you must go this route) or one can simply use a digital scale. Choose the largest brining vessel that fits in the fridge (I favor a square plastic Cambro from a commercial cooking supply store, the measurements on the side can help for quicky 1/2 cup per gallon brines), put it on the scale and true the scale to zero. Now add the meat and weigh, true again, cover with water and weigh again. You've got the meat and water separately in grams now, computing the grams needed of salt is easy on any calculator with no conversions required:

salt = 0.03 * (water + 0.7 * meat)

Now, Paul Bertolli gives various recipes for adding allspice, peppercorns, cloves, juniper berries (pounded from whole spices), onions, carrots, celery, parsley, thyme, bay leaves to the salt/sugar brine, and bringing to 160 F before cooling. One can wing these proportions, go very easy on the spices until one knows, e.g. a gram or two of each per pound of meat is a lot.

Paul Bertolli is fearful of the meat going bad, and wants the brine in the 30's F before the meat sees the brine. I accomplish this by using way too little water, cooling, and adding ice to get the weight right. Alas, sometimes my ice doesn't all melt, making the brine too salty at first. The Catch-22 here is this method requires the meat on the premises, to be weighed and to see how much water will then fit, so it's aging while it waits for the brine to chill. And who plans far enough in advance to lose this day?

It takes one day to 4-6 days to make ham, depending on the size of the piece of meat.

Judy Rodgers is of the opposite opinion, the brine should be nearly at room temperature to speed penetration. Paul's "cold shower" is not for her! (Do put the brine in the fridge at this point, or the meat will indeed spoil.)

My single favorite cut is a bone-in loin roast, with apple wood smoke. Judy Rodgers also suggests cutting the bones away from the loin except for a strip at the bottom, so the roast opens like a book. This helps in both brining and cooking. After trying this, I'd take the suggestion further, as the slowing cooking part of the roast is the "hinge". I'd take off the bones completely to form a very generous country rib rack, and brine and cook it separated from the loin. The rib rack won't cook as far as one would like for ribs in the time the loin gets, but it's awesome cooked further in a pot of beans.

After the loin roast reaches 140 F to 160 F to taste, I finish it over a hot fire. An old Weber is useful here, unless you're Glenn and can simply apply a flame thrower swiped from the set of Arnie's film "Commando" to the charcoal in a spare ceramic cooker. (If you think I'm kidding, you've never seen Glenn in action.)

Judy Rodgers makes another crucial observation: Pull the meat out of the brine 12-24 hours before cooking, so the salt can equalize throughout the meat. Otherwise, one gets a salty "shock wave" near the surface. Obvious in hindsight, and I can taste the difference, but I didn't think of this before reading it in her words.

Glenn! Why didn't you tell me where the party was?!?!

Ahh, I see where the love of ceramic cooking has moved. Beautiful cookers, I'm very impressed with the design.