Cured Coppa

Today I embark on a quest of meat cured love. I mean hell, I've made bacon before and guanciale, why the hell not go a bit further and a bit longer. You know length matters, and if you don't, well then I guess I feel a bit sorry for you. Well anyway where was I... yes longer. I'm talking about time and pork in one delicious force, that is if all goes well.

It starts with a fine coppa from the boys over at the Meat Hook. Their meats are all sourced as locally as possible coming from all sorts of great farms in the New York area and sometimes even some little piggies come in from Queens. Yea you heard me, Queens bitches, as in the most massive borough of New York City. Who the hell knew they were raising livestock right under Kevin James' nose. Back to the pork. I got 3 lbs. of coppa, which is from the shoulder of the piggy, directly behind its head. From there I cut it in half, this way I can experiment a bit with aging it for different lengths of time.

Now it's time for the spices aka the cure.

5 oz Kosher Salt

1 oz White Sugar or Raw Sugar

2.5 oz Dark Brown Sugar

0.8 oz Red Pepper

0.5 oz Smoked Paprika

0.5 oz Black Pepper

0.2 oz Sage or Thyme or both

0.5 oz Garlic Powder or the real stuff

1 tsp DQ Curing Salt #2

From what I've heard, using the curing salt, aside from just the kosher stuff, you greatly lower the risk of botulism by a whole lot, if you're feeling like living your stupid ass life on the edge, just go for the kosher salt.

Now get a huge bowl and grab your meat... yes grab your meat you damn five year old. If you want to grab your junk and throw it in that bowl and cure it, go for it. I'm sure it won't shrink too much smaller, like we realized before, it aint that big to begin with. I'm sure you'll make the Darwin Awards some day, so why not make it today. Now that your PORK is in the big ass bowl, make it rain. Pour that savory curing concoction all over that raw porky goodness. Too bad this isn't gonna be ready for a few months. Rub that meat, I know, all over. Make sure that cure is getting all over that coppa. If there's any nooks and crannies, get em covered with cure.

Once that's done, throw the pork with the cure all over it into a big ziploc bag. If you have your pork in two pieces, use two bags... I really don't care. Hey, you say you've got access to a vacuum sealing food mabobber, why the hell not? Go for it. If you're using the poor man's ziploc bag, just make sure you force all the air out of it.

Hard Part . . . Part One

Let that pork cure. You have to leave it in your fridge under a littler bit of weight for 10 to 15 days. Flip it every other day. From there, it's going to go something like...

remove from bag

rinse your meat

dry it off

slam it deep down into a sizable casing (natural of course)

and wait some more (a few weeks or month or two)

I'll write more on this as it gets done.

Bye Dad.