Equilibrium cure times
How do you guys determine the cure time needed for equilibrium cures?
I’m honestly starting get a bit confused, times vary SO much across the board. I have been getting into bacon as a general thing (cold smoked, warm smoked, candied, streaky, pancetta etc) to give an idea of what I come across.
So let’s talk pork belly. the initial curing step is different for every recipe I find.
I noticed some seem to prefer curing based thickness which makes sense I guess (I believe 1 week for every 2,4cm/inch of thickness?)
but I also came across (supposedly) traditional recipes that let the belly cure for just 16 hours, no matter the size. A butcher’s handbook that I got uses 4 weeks for a whole belly(4-5 kilograms) a butcher I asked wet brines pork bellies for 4 days but his approach (saturated salt solution) isn’t viable at home due to the size. A chef’s recipe goes for 3 weeks of curing, for 3 kilograms.
Here is the kicker, all the examples above are for pancetta Tesa. If I start looking to other bacon types (cold smoked bacon) the times for an equilibrium cure can shoot up to 2 weeks per kilogram of meat.
So I’m rather curious, how do you guys approach curing times? I know you can’t over cure in a Equilibrium cure, but it would still be nice to have time as efficient as possible while staying in the safe area of ensuring a proper cure.