Hello. Good morning.
And welcome to another episode of WTF, where we transform food right here
in the Modernist Pantry test kitchen.
I'm Mark Frechette.
And I'm chef Scott Guerin, the research development chef here at Modernist Pantry.
All right, chef.
A wonderful assortment of probably one of the internet's favorite foods:
anything cured, anything salty and fatty.
But, I think today what we're going to be talking about is kind of
the transition from this, all the way to some of the more delicious
looking things throughout, correct?
Yeah, absolutely.
So we're going to be talking about curing.
And curing is a preservation technique.
And the ingredients that we're talking about are Prague Powder number
one, and Prague Powder number two.
So what we have here is pork belly.
And pork belly is great on its own.
You can roast it.
You can do a lot of different things with it, but it doesn't last that long.
Seven days is probably the max you're going to get out of it.
So if you take Prague Powder, you can cure it and you can make things like
bacon, which everyone loves bacon.
And that takes about seven days to cure, but then you
have it for months after that.
So without getting too history channel with things, curing, while it makes
things intentionally delicious, more of a preservation technique.
Yeah, absolutely.
It was so people could eat over the winter.
So, so I think when a lot of people think bacon after they're done all of
the normal, like mouthwatering delicious things, they started thinking about
sodium nitrate or sodium nitrites.
And that's kind of a critical part to the curing process.
That's right.
Yeah, absolutely.
So sodium nitrite is in Prague one and Prague two has sodium nitrite and nitrate.
And what those do is they prevent botulism.
And botulism is a deadly foodborne illness that you can get, you know, if I were
to just leave this in the refrigerator for a week, or if I left it out and
tried to cure it with nothing, then yes, it would probably form botulism
and then make a lot of people sick.
So we're going to talk about the difference between the Pragues in a
second, but let's talk about your favorite Prague, which I think is Prague one.
Yeah, Prague one's a little bit more, you know, quick.
I can make bacon in seven days.
I can make ham in seven days to two weeks, depending on obviously the size of it.
It's just a little bit faster.
Prague two does amazing things.
Long-term cures, think prosciutto, like we have here, or even pepperoni.
Everyone's had pepperoni.
So that's what Prague two is done for, it's used for long-term dry cures.
But Prague one, like I did with the bacon, is a short-term, wet cure.
So, I just wrapped, you know, rubbed it on the outside of the bacon.
You can also make a brine if you wanted to.
And I allow it to sit in the refrigerator.
So, well, you kind of teased it out a little bit, but is that the, is that by
the way, if that sounded great, we're going to go a little bit more into bacon
in a moment, but if you want that recipe with a little bit more details, you can
find it at blog.modernistpantry.com.
Look for the one titled, appropriately enough, the cure for what ails you,
because if it's not puns, what's the fun?
Yeah.
So that was terrible.
So tell me a little bit about the difference between the Prague Powders.
Because I think like Prague two being the second one, is the better one.
That's not quite how it works.
Some people will look at it and say, Oh yeah, this is the second version of it.
So, it's better.
Prague two is made specifically for long-term dry cures.
You will need a little bit more equipment for this.
I wouldn't suggest just taking this, hanging it in your basement, or, you
know, taking a leg of pork and rubbing this on it and hang it in your basement.
That's not how it works.
You need, you know, temperature and humidity controlled environment to do so.
But with Prague one, it's very simple.
You take this pork belly here.
We have a recipe on, on our blog.
It's dextrose, Prague Powder one and just more salt.
And we can talk about what Prague Powder is made of in just a moment.
And you rub it on the outside with a little bit of seasonings.
You put it into a bag and every day, you just give it a little bit of
a massage to get the Prague Powder and the cure into the meat itself.
Over a few days, it'll start to firm up and then after seven days, you can toss
it in a very low temperature oven until it's completely set like this, or you
could smoke it if you have those means.
Okay.
So what's some of the, so the difference between the Prague Powders is, is really,
one's more of a, one's more advanced, you'll need some advanced equipment.
But Prague one's really the more accessible of the two.
Yeah. So, so we'll talk a little bit about them.
Prague one and Prague two are made up of mostly salt, just table salt, right.
Okay.
Prague one contains sodium nitrite and Prague two contains sodium nitrite and
sodium nitrate, like I mentioned before.
The best way to think of it: short term is one long-term is two.
Sure.
And then normally when it's, we don't, we don't have, but normally a lot of
ingredients and a lot of this stuff we talk about just happens to be a,
you know, a bit of a white powder.
This is a bit different.
Yeah.
So this is great because if it does come out of this bag and go into a
different container, it is tinted pink.
So you can differentiate between this and regular table salt because you don't
want to be sprinkling this onto a garnish on your, you know, family dinners.
Yeah.
Because again, it's a lot of sodium nitrite and yeah.
Great for curing in small amounts, terrible for seasoning
because sodium nitrite.
Okay.
Now when you think about it, you might be thinking like, Oh, it's a pink salt.
So this is clearly different than Himalayan pink salt.
Himalayan pink salt is done naturally through the minerals that are in
the earth that are near the salt.
So that's why it is pink.
It's almost more of an orange hue to it.
This is tinted pink with food color.
So it's slightly neon in color.
You should be careful.
While it does look kind of pretty it's, you definitely know
there's a little bit of danger.
And so it's definitely not Himalayan pink salt.
No, but we call it Prague Powder.
That doesn't mean it's the only name it has.
I think one of the favorite things when you get a new ingredient, is to
find as many recipes as you can for it.
So what are a few other things I might find this as?
Yeah.
So if you're searching for recipes, obviously, go to a reputable
source for the recipes, such as, blog.modernistpantry.com.
We're like professionals here.
So different names for it, Insta Cure, QuickCure, TCM, which
stands for tinted curing mixture.
You may see that.
Modern Cure, DQ Cure, DC Cure and Sel Rose.
So all those names, you could type in and you could find
recipes for Prague one or two.
So we talked a little bit about making bacon with this stuff and, and, and it
might sound really exciting, but a lot of times when you think about, you know,
the DIY method, you might think this is probably going to be price prohibitive
to get into or something like that.
But they're really not.
I've got a camera in the way of my cheat sheet here, but you've got, you've got
the Prague Powder one, which in the small, this is what we call the home size.
This is what we call the pro size.
The home size is $5.99.
The pro size is only $12.99 at modernistpantry.com.
And this is if you're looking to just get in with cures, this is
the one to go to, the Prague one, unless you're really getting fancy.
Yeah.
And the best part about it is, is you get 50 grams in there, but it only takes
a teaspoon to cure five pounds of meat.
So, yeah.
And what around, you know, one tablespoon for, for 25.
Or one ounce per 25 pounds of meat.
So really you get a good value out of it because you're not using a lot.
It's that, and then you add more salt to it.
Just to make it easier to use.
And appropriately enough, because it's for curing and for preservation,
you'd expect it to be one of those ingredients that, you know, you can buy
it, even if you don't use a lot of it.
It's got a really, really, really long shelf life and it's
handy in these Ziploc bags.
Yeah. This one, I'm looking at it.
And I know this isn't from the latest batch.
We've got a best if used by 2021.
So you've got time before you even get by the best by date.
But then of course it's everything in there is made for preservation already.
So sodium nitrite and sodium chloride.
So those are both preservation things.
So, so it's standing in a sealed bag away from the elements.
Obviously, if you get liquid in there, it's going to clump up, but
if you just use it properly and keep it in there, it's going to
be perfect until that use-by date.
Well, even if making bacon, doesn't become a lifestyle choice for you, and it's just
something you do occasionally as well.
So we always, in these WTF episodes where we transform food, we've
also gotten a bit of a speed round where it's, what's the food?
We talk about what's the food made easier.
What's the food made better.
What's the food being new.
I think we've kind of hit the nail on the head with what's the food made easier
because yeah, you don't have to go, you know, you can make your own bacon.
You can pick up the pork belly, you can use some of it for roasting.
And if you have some leftover, you make bacon out of it.
You can make your own ham, you can make your own pretty much anything that
that's cured that you would naturally buy in a grocery store that sometimes
just has a ton of sugar added to it.
We can get into that as well as we're going to get into
things that are made better.
You can take this bacon, and then you can add whatever flavors you want.
I had mentioned seasonings before.
This bacon right here only has black pepper and bay leaf.
But what if you wanted to make spicy bacon?
You just add some chili flake to it.
You wanted to make a maple bacon?
Yeah.
You add maple to it.
So there's a lot of different things that you can do when you're adding to this.
Now that's kind of teasing it, the made better, but we were
discussing different uses.
'Cause cause whenever we talk about an ingredient, we always like to
find some additional uses for it.
There's no such thing as a uni-tasker for a lot of these ingredients,
but if you're going to be a uni-tasker, bacon's a good trick.
But useful for more than just even the traditional cures.
You were talking about pâté, right?
You can make real beautiful pâtés.
Sometimes pâté gets overcooked.
It's gritty.
It's grainy.
I mean, it's made of liver.
So those are really delicate things to work with.
So if you cook it at a low, nice temperature and you add a little
bit of the Prague Powder, then obviously Prague Powder number one,
since it's short term, you can make a beautiful pate that maintains its
color and lasts a little bit longer.
Wow.
So and then of course the other part of the, the speed round, if
you'll call it that, we like to take our time through the speed rounds
here, is what's the food made new?
And you kind of had me at spicy bacon.
Spicy bacon, but also think about ham, right?
You can take ham and it's always Honeybaked ham.
If you go to the grocery store, you're always going to get Honeybaked ham.
It's a delicious product.
I mean, it's sugar added to a salty meat.
But what if you wanted to make different flavors of it, right?
You wanted to add it to, let's just go off the top of my head.
You can add the flavors that you'd naturally find in kimchi.
So, if you have like spicy Korean chili flake, you add some, some soy to it.
You add all these ingredients, you can really elevate and make things your own.
So I think, I think if somebody is just like, kind of stumbling for cookbook
ideas, experimental bacon, yeah.
As long as your use a proper base recipe, like the one that we have, like the dry
rub that we have, you can add to it.
The only thing that I would suggest that you do not add to
it is a vinegar or any acid.
So don't be squirting lemon juice into it or vinegar, 'cause
they don't react well together.
Also if you're going to use a liquid smoke, that does have a very small
amount of acid in it, so use it in very small amounts, or you can use
something like a smoker, or if you want to just kiss it with some smoke, we
have a smoking gun available as well.
And that's a really, on-demand kind of smoker that you can slice
your bacon, hit it with a little bit of smoke, right at the end.
And boom, you have smoked bacon that you made yourself in your house.
I kind of like the smoking gun concept too because it means you can make
yourself a boatload of bacon and smoke a little bit for this smoked use.
And then if you wanted to leave the rest on its own, kind of.
Yeah, it's a blank pallet and you add whatever to it.
That's fantastic.
Is there anything, is there anything we've kind of missed about either the
Prague Powder or bacon or curing that, that you've really wanted, because this
is your stage and the ingredients' stage.
Is there anything that we've kind of missed?
Like, man, if you're going to get into Prague Powder, here's the one
or two things you need to know.
I mean the most important thing: use a reputable recipe found somewhere
where, you know, it's not just add six teaspoons or tablespoons of that.
If you see a lot of this going into something, check your source.
Prague one, quick cures.
Prague two, long-term dry cures.
You would never make a brine out of Prague two.
Those are really the big things that we need to just make sure that we know.
And as always make sure to source your ingredients themselves from reputable
locations, that's going to include your dry ingredients, but also, so you know,
hit up your local butcher or wherever.
Support local farms, things like that.
Absolutely.
Well, I think that's about all the time we have before we let
the camera crew and everybody else loose upon a table full of bacon.
Imagine this will only last a couple of minutes.
Thank you so much for joining us here on We Transform Food here in
the Modernist Pantry test kitchen.
If you're looking for Prague Powder, Prague one or Prague two, I think Prague
one's the recommended one to go with, you can find it at modernistpantry.com.
Find some starter recipes at blog.modernistpantry.com.
And be sure wherever you're watching this video, whether you're on YouTube or on
Facebook, leave us a comment and let us know what you want us to tackle next.
If you have any questions, chef's always there to answer.
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Thank you so much.
I'm Mark Frechette.
I'm Scott Garren, and have a wonderful day.