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Curing and Salting

Salt-curing, acid-curing, dry-curing, brining

32 rungs across 29 volumes

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Africa

Senegal & Gambia

Marinate in acid before you caramelise, not instead of it, for yassa

The two stages of yassa are not interchangeable, and doing them in the wrong order produces a completely different, worse dish.

Ghana & Nigeria

Age and cure as seasoning

Ikoyi: 120-day sirloin, four-month Angus, 70-day shorthorn, 10-day sea bass, week-cured trout.

Morocco

Acid, salt and aged fat as dosed ingredients

Home cooking uses one lemon and one salt cellar.

Zambia, Zimbabwe, Malawi & Mozambique

Kapenta, matemba and usipa are a base, not a garnish

Kapenta is Limnothrissa miodon and Stolothrissa tanganicae, two Lake Tanganyika clupeids introduced into Lake Kariba and Cahora Bassa and now the cheapest...

Angola, Namibia & Botswana

Dry curing with no heat, and water activity as the instrument

Biltong looks like jerky and is not, and the misunderstanding is dangerous rather than disappointing.

South Africa, Lesotho & Eswatini

Dry cure by weight loss, and understand that the vinegar is doing a specific job

Biltong is not jerky. Jerky is heated to at least 71°C. Biltong is air dried with no heat lethality step at all, which is why the process specification matters...

Asia

Armenia and Azerbaijan

Salt, press, dry, then coat

Basturma's real method, best sourced from a thirty-year Los Angeles basturma maker whose technique descends from family makers in Armenia and Lebanon: fresh...

Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan & Turkmenistan

Salt curing and casing for horsemeat sausage

Kazy's method is a controlled dehydration, not simply seasoning: whole strips of rib meat and fat are cured in salt, garlic and pepper for six hours to a full...

Europe

Southern Italy, Sicily & Malta

Salt and dry rather than reach for vinegar or fire

Pantelleria's capers are picked by hand before dawn, then layered in sea salt for ten days with daily turning, drained, and salted a second time for a further...

Greece & Cyprus

Grind and marinate whole spice fresh, and give it time

Afelia, a specifically Cypriot pork dish, is built on pork cut into roughly 4cm cubes, marinated overnight in the fridge in red wine, salt, pepper and whole...

The Basque Country, Cantabria & Asturias

Rehydrate salt cod on a schedule, not by guesswork

Bacalao's preservation depends on drawing water out under salt; rehydrating it well means reversing that process under control, soaked in cold water in the...

The Basque Country, Cantabria & Asturias

Marinate whole spice and let time, not heat, do the early work

Basque and Cantabrian marinades for pork and beef, wine, salt, pepper and whole spice worked in overnight, depend on slow penetration under refrigeration...

Gascony, the Southwest and the French Basque Country

Salt first, submerge second, and let the fat do the sealing

Confit's actual mechanism is not the cooking heat, it is the fat itself: meat salted roughly 24 hours to draw out surface moisture and season through, then...

North Germany and the Baltic Coast

Vinegar-brine pickling to the point of dissolving bone

Rollmops and Bismarckhering are cured in a brine strong enough, roughly 7 percent acetic acid and 14 percent salt, to soften and effectively dissolve the...

Austria and the Habsburg Table

Cure and cold-smoke, don't hot-smoke, for Alpine preservation

Tiroler Speck's specification is precise for a reason: dry salt with juniper, pepper and garlic first, drawing moisture out and beginning preservation...

The Czech Republic and Slovakia

Full salt penetration before smoke, checkable by the cut

Cold-smoked meat and cheese on both sides of the border share one non-negotiable prerequisite: the salt must fully penetrate to the centre before smoking...

Galicia

Desalt cured pork on a schedule, not by guesswork

Lacón and other salt-cured Galician pork require a proper soak before cooking, traditionally 24 to 48 hours in cold water changed every eight hours, to draw...

Catalonia, Valencia, Murcia & the Balearics

Curing sobrassada is fermentation and paprika doing two jobs at once

Sobrassada is made from coarse-ground pork and back fat mixed with salt, roughly 20 to 30 grams per kilo of paste, and sweet pebre bord, around 60 grams per...

Andalusia

Marinate in acid and spice before the pan

Adobo, the marinade behind cazón en adobo, works on a different chemical logic to the plain flour of pescaíto frito: garlic, sweet paprika, cumin, oregano and...

The Canary Islands

Give a wine and vinegar marinade its full day

Conejo al salmorejo's marinade, oil, wine, vinegar, garlic, pimentón, cumin and herbs pounded and combined, is left on the meat a full twenty-four hours...

Portugal

Cold water, low heat, and never a rolling boil

Bacalhau's demolha, its soaking, exists to restore water to the dried fish, not only to remove salt, and it must be done in cold water changed frequently; warm...

Portugal

Wine, garlic, and a marinade built to travel

Vinha d'alhos, wine or vinegar worked with garlic, salt and paprika or chilli, is this cuisine's structuring marinade wherever meat needs to keep, whether...

Ukraine and Belarus

Dry-cure salo by touch and time, not by a fixed weight

Salo is genuinely difficult to over-salt, since the fat only absorbs what it needs rather than taking up salt indefinitely the way lean meat does; three to...

The Western Balkans

Rest the meat before you shape it, and understand what the rest actually does

Sarajevo's own account of ćevapi preparation calls for the diced meat to be salted and mixed with water in which garlic has been boiled, then left overnight in...

The Adriatic and Albania

Match salt, wood and wind to the microclimate, not to a single recipe

The whole point of this coast's charcuterie is that there is no one cure.

Scotland, the Highlands and Islands

Salt first, dry the skin, then decide which smoke you want

Every cured fish and every hot-smoked haddock in this chapter starts the same way: salt applied before anything else, drawing surface moisture out by osmosis...

Scotland, the Highlands and Islands

Give the smoke time, not heat, and know which one you're doing

This is Rung 1's principle taken further, into a preservation technique proper rather than a flavouring one.

Ireland

Salt draws water before it does anything else

Home-cured bacon depends on the same sequencing this atlas keeps returning to in cured meat everywhere: salt drawing moisture out of the flesh first...

Oceania and the Pacific

Fiji