A Year in Preserving - Dry-Cured Tenderloin.

Those of us who serve at the chalk face love a good text book. This does not mean we love every text book, only that we love a good text book.
A short while ago, when I was starting to show some interest in curing and preserving meat, the Beautiful wife bought me a few books online and they have all been instructive, some of them outstanding. One of these books was the fantastic Dry-Curing Pork by Hector Kent.

Hector Kent's brilliant book.

The reason that this is such a good book is that it is written by a teacher in the form of a text book. There are clear instructions on every recipe, the sections on such things as Nitrates and Nitrites are simply written and the overall tone is positive and helpful. Every recipe has a section entitled "What this recipe teaches" which explains the skills and the knowledge gained whilst producing the recipe. It is the perfect text book for grown ups! Further to this its paints a picture of the Kent's lifestyle which is very seductive indeed.
For my first attempt at a genuine air dried meat I chose the recipe for Dry-Cured Tenderloin. I have, in the past, made bacon with commercially made cures but this was the first time I went completely from scratch. I have a small, 6 bottle wine cellar, which is basically a fridge that will hold a temperature at 8 to 15 degrees centigrade. This is the perfect little aging cellar for my tenderloin.
To keep curing simple there are two basic types of cure, cunningly called Cure #1 and Cure#2. Cure#1 contains nitrites and Cure#2 contains nitrates. Cure #2 tends to be used for longer cures and drying times as it is safer.
The recipe below explains the process and some of the methods used. Owing to the fact that curing meat requires accuracy the quantities required for the cure are shown as a percentage of the weight of the meat. I must stress that this recipe is not my own but Mr Kent's. We are all students at some level.

Dry Cured Tenderloin
1 Pork tenderloin

Cure
3% Salt
0.25% Cure (I used #2 but #1 would work)
0.25% Black Pepper
0.5% Garlic Powder

The meat should be trimmed and made as smooth as possible. It should then be weighed and the quantities for the cure calculated. (In the book Kent even provides a quick tutorial on percentages!)
The meat and all the cure ingredients should then be thoroughly mixed in a freezer bag and as much air as possible removed. This should them be placed in an ordinary fridge for two weeks. I should be turned and mixed a little regularly.
After the curing, the meat should then be washed of all the cure and dried with a kitchen towel.
The meat must then be weighed and the weight recorded.
Kent's recipe suggests that the meat should be cased inside a hog casing (the natural casing for a British Banger, it is the lower digestive tract of a pig) and the trussed. As I couldn't get a casing wide enough I just trussed mine, as he also suggests.

Trussed and ready to dry

When fully trussed the meat should be hung in the "cellar" for about two weeks until it has lost 30% of its weight.

The Tenderloin in its Cave

It might produce a white mold on the outside, should this happen it is simply wiped of with a kitchen towel soaked in vinegar.

The finished article

I was truly delighted with the final product and I shall be curing two more of these at the weekend. The texture and mouth feel was not unlike a Bresaola but with a porky, garlicy taste. This is a strange thing to write but it tasted very much like French preserved meat and sausages. My next adventure in curing meat will be some Saucisson Sec in a French style, but my next Blog post will be article on Confit Duck Legs.