Meat curing

Principle

Meat is treated with salt or strong salt solution containing NaNO₃, KNO₃ and which may contain sugar and spices .

Salt and sugar both cure meat by osmosis. In addition to drawing the water from the food, they dehydrate and kill the bacteria that make food spoil.

Nitrite or nitrate are used for retarding rancidity, curing-pink color, killing bacterial

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Two curing methods

Wet (or brine) curing and dry curing. In the wet curing, the curing ingredients were mixed with boiling water to form a "pickling" brine. But in dry curing, the ingredients were simply rubbed into the meat several times over the period of the cure.

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Side effects

The excessive intake of nitrites causes a fall in the level of haemoglobin in the blood. In long term this leads to malnutrition and reduced lifespan. Nitrates are harmless, but when nitrates are ingested in the diet they are reduced to nitrites in the body. Then nitrites may react to form nitrosoamines.

In the stomach, nitrites are converted into nitrous acid:

NaNO₂(aq) + HCl(aq) --> HNO₂ (aq) + NaCl(aq)

Amines are formed during the digestion of proteins. Under certain conditions, nitrousacid reacts with secondary amines to form nitrosoamine:

HNO₂ + R₂NH --> R₂N-N=O + H₂O

Many nitrosoamines have been shown to cause cancer in animals.

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Examples: Salted fish, pork shoulder, ham, corned beef, bacon, sausages, luncheon meat, Chinese-style preserved meats (sausage, duck and pork)

pork shoulder

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