Cured and Smoked Pork Chops - Cure Question


 
Steve_A (Tatoosh)

Steve_A (Tatoosh)

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I tried these for the first time last weekend. The recipe was from an ancient post in a different post. It involved Morton Tender Quick, a quart or so of water, wet cure for 24 hours, then smoke.

My success was between okay and marginal. They were a bit too dry. The flavor is good, sort of hammy, but not too salty. I am using a Weber 22.5 OTG kettle and Smokenator. I smoked them for 2 hours at 175F or so, then kicked the heat up to 240F to finish.

Next time I will probably do a rub cure instead of brine cure. I will "warm" smoke for 2 hours, then pull them. I will finish them in my sous vide setup. That lets me take them to exact temperature I want and no more. And it should keep them from drying out.

I am curious about if the cure helps kill buggies so I don't need to cook to so high a temperature. I know that sodium nitrite in a cure converts to nitric acid and that along with salt will help retard bacteria growth.

With bacon that I warm/hot smoke, I take it to 150F but I'd like to take the chops up to 145F only. These are fresh pork chops here in the Philippines that does not have the same quality controls that the USA does. I often go to higher temps just to be safe. Many of my friends are older and I don't want to make them sick.

But I'd like to get some feed back about when doing a cured pork chop and smoking. I am planning to sous vide cook them to 145F for a couple of hours. I hope to try making these again in a couple of weeks.

Just for info: Sous Vide is where the item is vacuum packed and cooked in a very controlled hot water bath at the exact temperature you want the meat to get to. No over cooking or temperature overshoot. I dial in my sous vide unit for 145F and the maximum overshoot is 146F or 1 degree fahrenheit.
 
Sounds like your problem was simply overcooking them. 2 hours at 175 followed by any significant cooking at 240 should take pork chops well past 140 if they're not extra thick. Just IMO, 140 is already medium for pork, anything above it starts to get into medium well or well territory and can be very dry.

If you're going to finish sous vide I would skip the "warm" smoke and apply a couple hours of smoke as cold as you can use before moving to the water oven.

My preferred temperature for lean pork, like chops, sous vide is 135F/57C for a couple hours or until you reach pasteurization according to the thickness of the meat. If you read up on the science behind it you will see that cooking for longer at 135 is just as safe as cooking for shorter at 140-145 - in a few hours you will achieve a 7D reduction in all the baddies you're most worried about (principally salmonella, c. perfringens, and c. botulinium but also staph bacteria). This makes it safe to eat even for older people provided you follow the other food safety guidelines regarding sous-vide i.e. clean hands and workspace, quick-cool in ice bath if you're not serving right away.
 
Thank you Dave from Denver! I will dial the PID controller back to somewhere between 135F to 140F. Does the 135F get rid of the pink completely? My chops are in the 1 inch range for thickness, bone in. While it wouldn't bother me so much but my guests would freak if I offered them pink pork. Are you using Douglas Baldwin's guide for temperatures? It looks like about 2 hours to 1 1/2 hours depending on what I set the controller to.

I would "love" to cold smoke them but all I have is the Weber/Smokenator setup. All I have prepackaged one use commercial "packets" in aluminum foil packages for the moment. So to get them to work, I have to have enough charcoal going that it raises the temperature to the 130F or 140F range. But it is a pain to keep going. I will play with some sort tin can retainer so I can do the Minion method without the charcoal falling off.

I am doing bacon now too and have 7 kilos of it in cure until the weekend. I want to "warm" smoke those but without having to readjust the charcoal very often. I just need to come up with something so I can keep small amounts of charcoal going reliably without hovering over it constantly.
 
Well they will be pink from the cure regardless, but with fresh chops there is still some noticable pink in the center at 135. 140 might make your guests more comfortable I suppose but I think it's too high.
 
I'd recommend starting with a bone in loin (it's a pork loin with back ribs and a bit of the spine attached). When you order it, you get the chine bone ripped off of it so you can make clean cuts, between the ribs, to make your chops.

This way you can smoke the whole thing for longer and not worry about overcooking. I just did one and I ran the wsm with a full water pan and it held 220* for 5 hours and the loin barely got to 140*.
 
Originally posted by j biesinger:
I'd recommend starting with a bone in loin (it's a pork loin with back ribs and a bit of the spine attached). When you order it, you get the chine bone ripped off of it so you can make clean cuts, between the ribs, to make your chops.

This way you can smoke the whole thing for longer and not worry about overcooking. I just did one and I ran the wsm with a full water pan and it held 220* for 5 hours and the loin barely got to 140*.
Click to expand...

Ditto. I love to start with bone in loin. If the chine is not removed I just give it a whack with the cleaver to break it between the ribs.

I brine whole bone in loin and then I add rub. It's a really great cook every time. I rottis, smoke, whatever. You then can split, cut finish how you like I often add glaze individual chops after pulling from the wsm or rotis and throw on the grill.

Sometimes I will turn it into crown roast.

Brining a whole bone in loin in a Home Depot bucket in the beer fridge is simple for me and almost not even a second thought.

Since I've been brining them it's just been a beautiful thing over the last couple years. Always good reviews.

I like to use Rita's recipe in the archive.
 
Thanks for the ideas guys! I really appreciate your thoughts and expertise. Of course, I am in the Philippines and the meat handling here is quite different than in the USA. I speak English and they kinda do but mostly don't. So if my wife is along I have a fighting shot at what I want as long as it is simple. If it is relatively complex, then she is confused and it all goes sour. My brother-in-law, an apprentice meat cutter in Manila, visits occasionally and that helps though he only knows the cuts they teach there. Which is significantly different different than US cuts.

So, I can get the chops, usually cut, but with a large layer of fat and sometimes skin attached. They will cut it off for me, but I will get charged for it either way.

I love the hammy pork chops and really want to zero in on an appropriate approach for the meat I get here. I've never got a whole bone loin to cut to chop later. When I order 1 inch chops, I am the crazy "kano" because no one does that here. Chops are thin and very very dry when cooked.

I much prefer them moist. And after this experiment with curing them, I really enjoy them quick cured. I have a little Morton Tender Quick, but it is disappearing quickly and I won't have the opportunity to have more shipped over for 5 or 6 months. I do have a bunch of InstaCure/Prague Powder #1 coming in 5 weeks. Along with a nice little stash of wood for smoking. Mostly hickory and a bit of cherry.

So I will hunt for Rita's recipe in the archive. What I need to come up with is a quick dry or wet cure for 1 to 2 inch chops, soaking for 4 hours to 24 hours using the pink stuff.

Dave from Denver, anything that looks cooked, a consistent pink color from cure and cooking is fine. But even a faint pink thread of less cooked meat in the center will not be so well received here. A sure way to cause "chismis" (aka gossip) for everyone not familiar with sous vide and pasteurization which is the majority of my friends and acquaintances in SE Asia. But I will definitely dial the PID controller back to 140F or under .
 
I found some entries in other forums that helped me make a guess at what a "homemade" Morton Tender Quick recipe might be.

Basing this on the Morton saying that there is 79 percent salt, 20 percent sugar, and 0.5 percent each of the nitrite and nitrate.

I broke those down, in grams, since it allowed me work the math a bit easier. I did a bit of rounding too. And I don't actually have a digital scale to let me weigh precisely.

In a discussion elsewhere, the folks making their own MTQ decided to change the ratio of Salt to Sugar from 8:2 to 7:3, so it ended up being 69 percent Salt, 30 percent Sugar. The 0.5 each for the Nitrite and Nitrate were turned into 1 percent Nitrite only in Prague Powder #1, since this cure is not for air drying.

So the basic Ersatz MTQ Sugar Cure:

<UL TYPE=SQUARE>
<LI> PP#1 64.0 grams or 3.4 to 3.5 Tablespoons (Tbsp)

<LI> Salt 253.0 grams or 2 cups 2 Tbsp Sea Salt

<LI> Sugar 136.0 grams or 2/3 cup 1 Tbsp

[/list]

This is my "theoretical" MTQ replacement cure using Prague Powder #1, local Sea Salt, and granulated or light brown sugar.
 
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