North of the Border Bacon?

[DATsBBQ]

Papa, or anyone else have a brine recipe to make Canadian Bacon? I'll be using MTQ. Target hunk of meat is a half of a pork loin (just over 4#)

[OSD]

Dave, are you wanting to do a wet or dry cure?

This is from a Morton cookbook I have.

1 boneless pork loin trimmed of all fat
1 tbls Tender Quick per pound of meat
1 tsp sugar per pound of meat
rub mixture into meat, put in a plastic bag and refrigerate and cure 3-5 days
Remove from cure rinse and soak in clear fresh water for 30 minutes. Pat dry and air dry in fridge slightly before slicing and cooking.

I also went to 1 tbls brown sugar instead of 1 tps of reg sugar

I did flip the bag while in the refrigerator every other day.

I soaked( 2 hours each time ) and rinsed 3 times. I did the one short & rinse once but the meat was too salty for me.

[DATsBBQ]

Gonna inject that bad boy

[Papa Tom]

I have had a Canadian bacon recipe but can't find it. What I would do is use 1/2 cup TQ and 1/2 cup sugar in a gallon of water, pump it up and zip lock in the rest of the solution. Let cure for a couple days then rinse/soak for salt removal and smoke. As you smoke it the drying increases the salt concentration on the surface drawing out more water so you might want to coat with oil before smoking.
I have a bit of a problem with Morton's TQ and Sugar Cure in that the ratio of salt to nitrates is high. heck you'd think they were selling salt...... Anyway I want to try getting some Prague #1 and mixing my own to cut back on the salt. Mortons guides are focused towards preserving meat but what we normally are after is the effects of the nitric oxide on the meat for texture and flavor and not necessarily preservation.

[JamesB]

This is making me think I need to try to make some CB too...

[DATsBBQ]

I'd like to try the Prauge stuff sometime. Seems all I can find locally is MTQ, and that's hit and miss. I got enough MTQ left to make up a batch.

[DATsBBQ]

Trimmed off a bunch of fat, then put the pork back in the bag. Added a gallon of water to the bag with the loin, and it wouldn't fit. So I went with 3 quarts of water, 1/2 cup MTQ and 1/2 Turbinado sugar and double (ziplocked) bagged it. Sunday or Monday it'll get smoked.