If you use Encapsulated Citric Acid don’t use Cold Phosphate - Sodium Phosphate but Sure Gel is fine. This is a good question and shows you are really thinking it through lcash74 good job and IVERYAN is also a nice answer. The real award though has to go to John Belvedere who must be the best meat processor in the State of NY. We do have some start cultures but we really don’t recommend them yet to retail customers. There is a lot of measuring of both temp and pH along with requirements for relative humidity that make it hard to manage at home. If we can ever find a reliable, affordable home dry curing cabinet we will dive deep into that but they are all insanely expensive and just seem to be getting either cheaper, or more expensive!
Citric Acid
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What if any purpose is citric acid in production of pressed ham or any other cured meats.
Thanks in advance -
Dave in AZ Military Veterans Sous Vide Canning Traeger Power User Arizona Dry Cured Sausage Dry-Cured Expert last edited by Dave in AZ
hankus46
Basically, none.
Citric acid is used to provide a simulation of the lactic acid tang you get from fermented sausage, so salami, pepperoni, old school summer sausage, etc.Formed and pressed ham is not a fermented product, so you never see an acidic tang with it.
Products it is commonly used in are
- summer sausage (which is now seldom made per its original authentic fermented uncooked sausage method), to provide a lactic fermentation simulation in a cooked sausage. By this point, probably most folks consider this the “correct taste”.
- Slim jim style tangy snacksticks
- Taylor pork roll for those who don’t ferment.
- Cooked unfermented pepperoni simulations, not super close to actual pepperoni but fun, fast, tasty and recognizable.
Thise are the only items I can think of that are chemically directly acidified, and they are all cured too.
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hankus46 It can be used to drop the pH if you wanted a tang and/or as a cure accelerator but there are better options for cure accelerators for pressed hams like Sodium Erythorbate
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mrobisr Team Blue Cast Iron Sous Vide Canning Dry Cured Sausage Masterbuilt Military Veterans Power User Regular Contributors last edited by
Jonathon said in Citric Acid:
but there are better options for cure accelerators for pressed hams like Sodium Erythorbate
Commercially that is what we used.
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