Starvin Larry

mtnforge says:

Nah you don’t suck man! I liked what you wrote.
Please by all means, I for one really appreciate you for any of your wisdom about fude. I think what you mentioned about those small overlooked essentials is a very important topic. I would argue salt & Sugar are two absolute essentials. You have both in suitable quantity you can preserve almost every edible thing on Earth. They generally do not spoil either. And with a couple other food safe acids you can make fermented sausage from beef, venison, elk and pork. Now your talking toothsome delicacies.That do not require refrigeration to store once made. Some actually improve with age due to enzymic activity.
I notice hardly any mention of these two vital food amendments, or whatever they are properly called. I’m fortunate to have grown up dry curing meat and fish. I still cure my own. Smoke too, cold smoke, entirely different smoking process from Barbecue and other hot smoking.
Dry curing is incredibly simple. Why it is such a mystery to many seems strange. It only requires close control correct temperature, time, and ratio’s of curing agent per lb of meat. Salt. Plain salt. Sugar is for breaking the harshness of straight salt cure if your making cured meat you wont process like a whole ham or large cut of meat. Sugar also balances out the flavor characteristics of salt curing. The modern cures with Nitrates and Nitrites create a number of desirable reactions and conversions by both gas and solid elements in the curing cycles. But you don’t need them. In fact pure sea salt has Nitrates naturally within it and actually makes a great cure agent.

And salt IS the ingredient in fermentation of vegetables which causes the growth of the good mold which kills off the bad mold, and gives the worlds Kimchi’s and Sauerkraut’s their wonderful characteristics. Also the vital flora we have suffered lack of in our diets and our health since the advent of common refrigeration in the 40’s. And veggie fermentation requires no refrigeration while fermenting, as does curing, nor afterwards. A huge plus in austere circumstances,, it is naturally self preservative, because the beneficial organisms are live within.
My wife makes Kimche, or Kraut, in a big old 7 gal ceramic crock. She uses cabbage, chinese cabbage, garlic, ginger, hot banana pepper and regular sweet ones, celery, onions, green onions and herbs, cucumbers, you name the green veggy comes out of the garden it goes in. puts around a tablespoon to 2 of sea salt per gallon, she puts cyane pepper powder, paprika, and ginger powder in too sometimes, then some fresh clean spring water, bruises up the chopped veggies with her hands, and puts a plate with a rock on it to hold the ingredients under the brine, with a white cotton towel secured tight over the top of the crock. Man does it stink fermenting! Like a septic tank on a hot August afternoon. Oh but brother, when you plow into a bowl of that Kimche, man your living large. Oh yeah, then she bottles it up in half gallon mason jars, lids barely tight, so they can’t vent, and down the basement in a covered wood crate. We have eaten Kimche 3 years old and its gets better tasting.

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