Just a cured pork shoulder

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I bought two pork shoulders to cut the neck muscle out and to make coppa. The idea regarding the preparation of the remaining meat (about 6 lb) at that time was not clearly played out in my mind and I decided simply to cure it.

The meat already had enough cuts from the removal of the bones and the excision of the neck muscle, so it was divided by the notches and natural muscle lines into relatively small but pretty pieces, treated with salt (2.75%), cure #2 (0.25%), granulated garlic ( 0.15%), sprinkled with finely chopped, fresh herbs from the garden (laurel leaf, thyme, rosemary and marjoram – in reasonable quantities, a leaf of one, a sprout of another), placed in a vacuum bag and forgotten in the refrigerator for two months.

Yes, yes, two months: probably it would have been enough to cure it for a couple of weeks. Well it happened that my hands did not reach it in a timely manner.  But from my point of view, the product turned out to be no worse, and maybe even better than if I kept the meat in a cure for 2-3 weeks: the taste of garlic has become brighter, certainly it is a matter of taste. Finally the meat was washed with homemade white wine and dried in the air for a couple of hours. The piece presented in the photo was dusted in a good amount of freshly ground black pepper, dressed in beef bung and cold smoked over alder chips for 20 hours.

After that the product was sent to the basement, where it was hung at 54-56 F and RH 80% for about three months. Weight loss was 40%. EQ was done by keeping meat in a vacuum bag in the refrigerator for additional two months. It turned out to be a very interesting product with a pronounced smell of dry-cured meat and light smoked taste with a piquant note of garlic and culinary herbs, and mild pepper heat in the aftertaste.