Curing Meat

 It's been a while since I've cured any meat. But now my wife and children seem to have sandwiches most days (and me) I want them to have the best lunch boxes possible. We already bake all our own bread, 4 loaves of sourdough for breakfast each week and about 28 rolls for lunch, but I get fed up with buying little packets of meat, with far too much plastic, cut far too thinly. 

I decided it was time to up my game. 

I've cured meat in the past, but fell out the habit. this is just me dipping my toe back in. I ordered soem different cures and bought the meat to practice on. A joint of brisket for pastrami and a small boned out joint of pork to make ham. 

The pastrami only takes 4 days in a wet brine, then boiled up for three hours it comes out this beautiful pink, flavoured with the herbs and spices from the brine (and cooking liquid). 

Perfect for sandwiches. I sliced it up then froze some and put the rest ready for the week. 

The ham was a dry cure, measured out to be 3% of the total weight of the meat, then left for a day per 12mm of meat (in this case about 8 days). Because you're only using the right amount of cure it''s hard to make it too salty with this method. 

I roasted this little joint and we had some for tea then some for sandwiches. It was  a completely perfect little ham. 

I'm always surprised how easy it is to cure meat. It doesn't really take too long, and it doesn't use that much equipment. It does provide a higher quality of meat for our sandwiches (honestly look at some of the ingredient lists on some of the packaged meats - we don't need to be eating all that!), but I need to get in a cycle with it like I am with baking bread. 

One thing I do think is that if I start to do this regularly then I need a way to slice the meat evenly and finely, maybe a meat slicer would be a good investment. My problem with that would be another item to store in the kitchen. 

What do you think, should I buy a meat slicer? Who has one already?