Salt curing meat - One prepper's perspective preppers

Recently /u/bobwhite946 posted the following:
http://ift.tt/2pOA52g . This brought some things to my memory. In the comments of that post I said: "Traditionally salt curing was done in the late fall when temperatures were dropping. The meat would be salted and, quite often, smoked as well. They were wrapped in cheesecloth and stored in the coldest place possible that wouldn't freeze. That could mean an attic or perhaps a springhouse. Keeping the meat below 38 degrees is ideal and could be achieved in much of the United States during the winter. Even places as far south as South Carolina can have storage cellars around this temperature throughout the winter. There's a reason North Carolina became famous for its hickory smoked hams."

I said this because I remember my grandmother doing this with hams in the fall. Not every fall because we weren't often there, but it's an indelible memory nonetheless. The meat was considered long term storage because it would last until spring when there might be a new lamb or kid [goat, not people :) ] to have for Easter. If times were rough, though, ham was for Easter because it was the only available meat. My grandma kept her hams in the springhouse which stayed surprisingly cool even in high summer in South Carolina. In winter it was a fun place to go. The springhouse kept the well head from freezing and kept the meat, eggs, milk, and butter cold enough without using a refrigerator which was good because they didn't own one until the early 1960s, except during the war years (that's how she described them) when they had one while living in military housing. She preferred the springhouse.
But to the meat... She would salt all types of meat. Dry rub it, let it sit while she moved to the next bit and then back around to the first piece. It would take a whole day to salt one pig. Just dry rubbing in as much salt as you could over and over. Some hams got sugar rubbed as well. For every two rubs of salt, one rub of sugar. She could process about 10 turkeys in a day, or 2 dozen chickens, but she preferred canning birds to salting them. Same with beef, but my grandpa liked salted beef so she'd do enough to keep him happy. After the day long salting, the meat would wrapped in cheesecloth and be hung up in the smoker, which was really just a small,almost airtight, she's my grandpa built. (This was also a fun place to play in when it wasn't being used.). He'd build a fire with the greenest wood he could find and start 'em smoking. Weather conditions affected how long they had to smoke. I never quite understood the weather part of the equation, but I was a kid and once they were smoking, my bb gun was more interesting. Anyway, that's how Grandma did them. While I never measured the temperature in the springhouse, I'd hazard a guess that it wasn't much above 38 degrees from mid-November through early April in the southeast corner of South Carolina. This method of curing meat may not keep meat for years, but it'll get you through the lean times.

Edit: I misspelled a word.

Submitted May 07, 2017 at 09:05AM by Somebody_81 http://ift.tt/2pmMwQi preppers