What do you want to produce, Stratts? A dry-cured product like a Parma style ham? Or the likes of a gammon that you'll need to cook? By far the easiest way for a first attempt is to make up a wet brine for a gammon. You'll get a superb result and won't need to worry about temperatures and humidity whilst curing. The brine bucket can be left in a cool shed, but shouldn't be allowed to get too cold as the cure won't then take properly
As a basic rule of thumb, Cure1 is used where the product is to be cooked, while Cure2 is used for the likes of air-dried products like salami, chorizo, etc.
A basic brine for a gammon would be 1 gallon of water to 1 cup of salt, 1/2 cup of brown sugar, and 40g Cure1 (that's about half the USDA recommended maximum so you'll well inside recommended limits) There's a lot of talk about nitrites being the bad guy of curing, but the negatives can all be safely ignored as long as you're careful. The body metabolises nitrite as a basic process of digestion so it's a naturally-occurring substance. In any case, botulism will carry you off far quicker than any imagined nitrite-related nonsense. One well-known 'chef' is on record as calls their bacon 'nitrite free' as they use celery juice as a 'cure'.............guess what that's really high in? Yep, naturally occurring nitrite
Anyway, if you go with this, trim the meat of any bloody bits & sinew, and if you can inject the joint with a brining syringe to get the brine into the centre all the better. You don't
need to do this, but it means you'll need to leave the gammon in longer so the cure can take hold. Incidentally, the pink colour of gammon is due to the nitrite. Give it 3 days per kilo plus an extra couple of days then either cold smoke it, or simmer it as it is before finishing it with a classic glaze.
That's a pretty basic method, but as I said you'll get a pretty much guaranteed result which should whet your appetite. Don't be tempted to take it out of the cure early as the centre of the meat won't be cured. It'll taste fine, but you'll end up with the meat being a pale grey colour where the brine didn't have time to penetrate.
if you go for dry-curing for air-drying you're looking at months before it'll be ready for consumption, and the techniques and risks of spoiling are high. I'd recommend a gammon to begin with, and read up as much as you can. Maynard Davies is really good, as is anything by Michael Ruhlman or Brian Polcyn, to name a couple
Thanks.
