Hammy tasting pulled pork

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"BTW, why is it that almost everyone complains about pre-injected pork and poultry, yet, so many advocate injecting or brining?"

Ray, I'm new to this forum, but have done a bunch of cold and hot (bbq) smoking. Uncomfortable posting, but maybe this will help.

Brining for whole chickens and turkeys, for example, helps the white meat cook to the same doneness of the brown meat. Brining here only means soaking in a kosher salt solution for about four hours. White meat otherwise cooks ahead of dark meat. That's why a chicken often has dry breasts and moist thighs. This occurs only with hot smoking (200 plus degrees), and is not applicable to cold smoking.

Cold smoking with a brine means that a sufficient level of salt has been added to the cure, which is comprised of poisons (sodiums cholride and nitrite), to keep you from poisoning yourself with an overdose. Injected into hams along the bone, etc. to prevent sour because of the otherwise lengthy time it would take for the brine to penetrate. The salt functions as much as an early warning system as a cure. Tastes too salty? Warning that the mixture has exceeded safe sodiums levels. The sodiums are necessary to prevent botulism at the extended periods of room and low smoking temps necessary to cold smoke meat. They kill bacteria, they can at least make you very sick if not topple you over.

Short answer is that sometimes brines are good. Sometimes they ain't.

Enjoyed the photos you have on your website.
 
To elaborate further, cures such as Morton's Tenderquick already have a proportion of sodium chloride added to the sodium nitrite to serve the early warning function. Others, such as Instacure #1 have much less sodium chloride. I add twice as much salt to each measure of Instacure (and an equal measure of sugar) to bring Instacure to the Tenderquick level.

Bottom line is that Hormel, like any big meat processor, is trying to cover their butts :-)
 
Thanks, for your input, Dean, and welcome to the forum! The best way to become involved is to just jump in. There are a lot of great folks here to make you feel welcome.

I am relatively familiar with the various methods of brining; I just don't do it with meat & poultry that's to be used for barbecue. I do use it as a curing agent for things that are going to be dried or smoked, like fish, etc. To me, a water, salt & sugar brine does not make for good taste. Yuck! I also find it humorous that some will complain about pork and poultry being 'enhanced' by the supplier but will do the same thing when they get it home. I can't imagine what a turkey breast that has already been injected with 12% 'enhancement' would taste like after brining or injecting with even more salt water. /infopop/emoticons/icon_eek.gif
 
I'm not interested in buying solution add product because it limits what I can do with the meat, besides paying top dollar for salt water.
Brinning just to brine I don't believe is the question, if I'm going to brine chicken then my aim is to introduce flavor (something other than just sweet) in that manor.
Ray, your right to brine solution add product would be ugly.
Jim
 
Yeah, that's the point. Buying a "tumbled/injected" (pre-brined) meat means that you're paying meat prices for 'salt water and assorted other chemicals'. In addition to that, the "flavor enhancement" of their addition just might conflict with the flavors you intended to impart to your food. It's a bad plan, top to bottom, and my opinion is that it is merely a profit maneuver.

-- Ken
 
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Dean Torges:
[qb]Did not understand you were asking a rhetorical question. Rats. /infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif [/qb] <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>I like your sense of humor, Dean. /infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif The question wasn't really rhetorical; I really would like to have a good answer. I find it interesting that someone would complain about 'enhanced' products but would, themselves, inject poultry or meat with almost the same thing as the suppliers do. If you read over my postings on the subject, you will see that I am totally against both practices. I do like a good marinade and, occasionally, use them to tenderize and flavor. I just don't think soaking a good piece of meat or poultry with water, salt and sugar enhances its flavor and texture.
 
Thanks, Ray. What I tried to say is that sometimes there are compelling reasons for us to use sodiums of one sort and another, but that I do not trust agribusiness to do it, and I do not believe the merchandizing reasons they give for doing it. I'm suspicious that these injected flavor enhancers function primarily to mask the sodiums that the meat giants use to cover their botulism butts. Beyond the conditions of its growth to marketable age, simply consider the conditions of time and circumstance under which mass production meat is butchered, processed and brought to Kroger's, and consider what is at stake for Hormel should a "Jack in the Box" episode trace to their product. (Since when is sodium phosphate?on the Hormel list?a flavor enhancer?) My question: Flavor enhancers or masking agents?

Nope, not for me. I've raised my own chickens for a long time (and they are not blood-clotted at the juncture of the thigh and drumstick, because they have the strength of a ciruclatory system that can bleed them dry). They have white, brittle bones. I help butcher them. My red meat is either from my neighborhood farmer friends butchered at a local abattoir, or game I have taken myself.

I'm not a health food nut by any stretch, but I like to extend some respect to the food I eat. It comes back to my family. Forgive me if I come on too strong here. I don't mean to. I have many more questions than answers.

"Someday you and I will take the Great Hart by our own skill alone, and with an arrow. And then the Little Gods of the Woods will chuckle and rub their hands and say, 'Look, Brothers. An Archer! The Old Times are not altogether gone!'" --Adrian Eliot Hodgkin
 
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