An age old method of curing meat that is not widely known.

Even in the hottest weather of the year pork can be cured and it will not spoil. After it is treated it needs no refrigeration. I suspect other meats can be cured the same way. I believe deer meat and beef can be cured the same way.

It is very simple to do. Just get you one of the old iron wash pots or something like that where you can boil about 10 gallon of water. Get it set up outside where you can build a good hot fire under it. Put about 10 gallon of water in the pot and get it hot. Not boiling but hot. Start dissolving salt into the hot water and stirring it. Have you an egg in something where you can gently lower the egg into the hot water. A large metal spoon will work fine if you bend the handle just a little. Keep dissolving salt into the hot water and checking it with the egg. When you have enough salt in the water where the egg will float you have enough. Get the water on up to a hard boil.

You should have the meat cut up and ready. REMOVE ALL THE SKIN FROM THE MEAT BEFORE YOU TRY TO CURE IT. The salt will not penetrate the skin deep enough to cure the meat. Save the skin until after you are finished curing the meat. Make sure you have a wire or strong string tied onto each piece of meat. Lift the meat by the wire and lower it into the boiling salt water where it is completely covered. A piece of meat the size of an average ham needs to stay in the boiling salt water exactly 1 minute. Then you can just guess at the time anything smaller than the hams needs to stay in the water. Judge it by weight and thickness.

If it stays in the salt water too long it will just start tasting old a little quicker. Before you cook the meat you need to put it in water for a couple of hours to soak some of the salt out of it.

After you have finished dipping the meat in the salt water and have it hanging up then if you used an iron wash pot’ empty the water that is left into something where you can save it for use later. Wash the skin you removed from the meat where you will know it is clean. Then cut the skin into squares about 3” X 3”. Put the skin in the hot wash pot and let it cook and render the lard out of the skin. Don’t use a galvanized wash tub for this or it will probably make you sick. After you have rendered the lard out of pig skin it is called cracklings. As you remove them from the pot lay then in something where they can drip and they will get rid of a lot of the fat that is in them. Then they make a pretty good snack. They are fattening but they have a lot more food value in them than a snow ball.

After you have run the meat through the salt water just hang it up and let it dry. You then can smoke it if you wish.

If you don’t want to use the lard for cooking you can always heat it up and pour some lye into it and make some good soap. A person should be able to get the instructions for making lye soap off the internet. Art