As we talked about in earlier videos, pork was one of the most common and popular meats
in the 18th century. It was one of the meats that would be supplied in rations for soldiers.
It was a common thing for sailors and the entire population. Pork was salted so that
it would last any number of months and could be transported, used in ships, the sailors
could eat it later on. Today we’re going to show you a method for salting and preserving
your pork in an 18th century manner.
Salting is an ancient technique, even previous to the Romans, very easily documented. There
are a couple of different variations of salting. Sometimes they would just pack their meat
in salt water or brine, sometimes they would hard pack it with lots of salt and then there’s
even adding salt peter to it for a deeper preservation technique that might last a little
bit longer, but didn’t taste as well. Today we’re going to prepare our salt pork in
this 2 gallon oak keg. This one is a well bucket keg that we sell at Jas Townsend & Son’s.
This doesn’t have the holes drilled in it. You can ask for a keg like that if you want
to do a similar project. This one has been touched up on the inside. We took a torch
and melted out the excess wax here at the top, and we also prepared a little wooden
lid that will press down on the pork and keep it inside the brine solution.
Before we get started packing our meat, we need a hot brine solution prepared.
There’s a common misconception that salt pork is easy to come by these days. You’ll
find something in a modern grocery store that’s called salt pork, but in reality it’s nothing
like what was known as salt pork in the 18th century. This is just a cured but unsmoked
pork belly product, but it isn’t actually prepared in a manner that 18th century salt
pork was. So rather than use a pork belly, we’re going to use a pork shoulder or this
is a picnic. I’ve got our pork already cut up into about 1 pound size pieces. We’ve
got to have it so we can put it in in layers so the salt can get into it, so we’ve got
1 pound pieces here. We’re going to put about a cup of salt into our barrel here so
that we’ve got a layer of salt in the very bottom. We’re going to spread that out and
make sure it’s nice and even and now we’re going to start putting our pork into the barrel.
We’ve got rind pieces on this. These rinds, you want to make sure, are toward the bottom
or toward the outside edges with the meat parts on the inside. You want to pack this
tight. You want to have as small a quantity of air pockets as possible. Each time we put
in another layer of meat, we put in another layer of salt. Make sure that’s all spread out evenly.
Get this tightly packed, and we add more salt.
You can’t add too much salt, so don’t worry about getting too much salt in this.
Better to have too much than too little.
That’s our final piece of meat. The keg is pretty much full. There’s still some
space there at the top. The final step here is going to be pouring the hot brine solution
in. That will fill in all the gaps and seal it up, and then I’m going to put our lid on.
So a method in the 18th century to see whether our brine solution was briny enough was to
float an egg. This is just a regular raw egg, still in the shell, and we can see that this
egg is floating in the solution, so we know its thick enough. There’s enough salt in here.
Here’s our hot brine solution. We know that it’s thick enough. We’re going to start
pouring it in on top until it completely covers our meat, and then it’s time for your wooden
lid. We’re going to float that up on top and then finally to make sure that this lid
presses down on top of the meat we’re going to place a weight on top. If we see some frothing
that means something is going on. We need to take care of that. We need to pour the
brine solution off, you need to scald the brine solution and then you can put it back
on again.
Well, our keg is ready to store now. In the 18th century it was traditional to process
pork and beef products, when they salt it, they would do that in the fall when the temperatures
were cool. It would make this last a lot longer. That’s the same thing we’re going to do.
We’re going to take this keg and we’re going to put it in the refrigerator to keep
it nice and cool so that it doesn’t go bad. It will probably last and be good for several
weeks, put in a cool place like that. In the 18th century they would use it all through
the winter into the next spring.
When it comes time to use your salt pork and you pull it out of the barrel, you need to
soak it. You need to soak it sometimes overnight, but at least 2 hours. You want to soak it
in fresh water, changing the water often so that you get as much salt out of that pork
as possible. You’re never going to get it all. It’s going to be a salty thing, but
other than that, you use it like you would any fresh cut. You can use it in any recipe.
Well, there you have it, salt pork. All the things you’ve seen in this video today,
you can see on our website or in our print catalog and don’t forget to follow us on Facebook.