Salt Pork

[James B White]

Salting pork was primarily a way of preserving it without refrigeration. All cuts of meat from a hog could be preserved by salting. Pork packing--putting salt pork in barrels for shipping--was a big industry in cities like Cincinnati, but individuals might salt a single hog for the family. Mrs. E. F. Haskell describes the latter:

To Salt Pork.—Lay in the bottom of the barrel a layer of solar salt, one and a half inch thick; pack tho pork edgewise as compact as possible, cover it with a layer of salt as thick as the bottom layer, then pack another layer of pork and the same quantity of salt, etc., until the whole is packed, finishing with a layer of salt. Make a brine as strong as possible of solar salt, put a weight on the pork, and pour on the brine, until it is covered several inches. A hog weighing two hundred and fifty pounds is the best weight to buy; be sure the hog is cornfed, not fatted on still-slops, as the pork to be hard must be fatted on corn. When pork is taken from the barrel, be careful that no part of the meat is left above the brine; if this happens, it will become wormy. All bone and lean meat should be removed when the hog is cut up. Lean salt pork is worthless; use it in the family, or make sausages.

The order to remove all lean meat, if taken literally, would leave only fat to be salted, and I do not think that is what she means.

Because most modern people don't want to salt a whole hog, one can cut down the above recipe and make it any time of year, not just fall butchering. It keeps at room temperature, and can be prepared many different ways, so is useful for either military or civilian living history. Allow 2-4 weeks ahead, for the salt to penetrate. Cutting the meat smaller will speed it up.

Any foodsafe container will do. Spread an inch or more of kosher or pickling salt on the bottom, set pork cut In 3-5 pound chunks on top, and put another layer of salt on top. You can speed the absorption by rubbing salt generously on each piece. Heat some water, dissolve as much salt in it as you can, let it cool a little and pour it over the pork to cover it. Use a plate to weight down the pork if necessary to keep it underwater. Put it in the refrigerator and stir it every few days. Because salt is cheap and the pork will absorb no more than needed, one can be generous without measuring.

When the outside of the pork turns grey and it's a little harder, you have salt pork. For living history, it can stay under brine in a crock or be dried off as much as possible and wrapped in cloth or brown paper.

Salt pork was usually prepared by boiling, changing the water once (or twice if wanted) to remove the excess salt. It could be served after boiling, or after a quick boil to "freshen" it, could be used in almost any fresh pork recipe. Here's an example from Mrs. Haskell of broiled salt pork.

Plain Broiled Salt Pork.—Cut the pork thin, gash the rind, and parboil until freshened. Broil until brown, lay it on a hot platter, and make a gravy of a little butter, a table-spoonful of hot water, and a dust of pepper. Serve with baked potatoes, boiled eggs, and cold ham.

 

[nitrofd]

I guess the salt pork that we buy in the grocery store is way different then the above as we are buying mostly salted far for use in cooking as opposed to preserving meat.

 

[Greg Taylor]

Modern salt pork has a shelf life, even when refrigerated, and does not freeze well. What was the "shelf life" for Civil War era salt pork?

 

[James B White]

Modern salt pork has a shelf life, even when refrigerated, and does not freeze well. What was the "shelf life" for Civil War era salt pork?

I don't know if any actual tests have been done. The goal at home was to keep meat from one butchering season to the next, and well salted pork kept at cellar temperature in brine should do that. Barrels of pork shipped in the heat of the south, left on loading docks in the sun, was a problem. Trouble also came with government contractors, or just companies, skimping on salt to save money, and there were numerous discussions about which sources of salt were best, which may have implied some were closer to 100% sodium chloride than others.

We don't realize how lucky we have it, being able to buy healthy pork and pure salt, and use clean containers.

I also expect that if we were to travel to the past, it would be like going to Mexico or a third world country, where the natives eat the food and drink the water just fine, but the newcomers get sick. So what we consider unacceptable would be just on the edge of acceptable in the past.

From a long article in DeBow's Review, 1857, on salt and salting meat:

"Much pork is irretrievably injured by bringing it to New Orleans, in bulk, on flat-boats. It is packed into those boats with the vile boiled salt, described, as I am informed—in many places it comes in contact with the damp soft wood of the boat, and large surfaces are exposed to the air. And. although, the first part of the voyage may be performed in cool weather, one or two weeks of the last of it, they may have the temperature of summer. Under such circumstances, it is impossible but that some spots, or parts of pork, thus handled, must become tainted; more especially, the leaner parts; and all of it must loose that freshness and sweetness of taste that Nature has given to such meat; nor can any after process of salting, smoking, or other means of curing, recover this natural sweetness. The rancid flavor and smell acquired by this preliminary management will always remain.

"Pork put up in barrels in the interior towns of the West, and sent to New Orleans and other cities for repacking, is often nearlyspoiled from similar causes. At the first packing bad salt is used, that is insufficient, to prevent putrescent gases from forming in the meat before it is repacked. The fact above stated shows how difficult it is to prevent meat, thus incipiently tainted, from spoiling outright; and should it be prevented by the process of repacking, it can never bo made into the agreeable healthy food that it would have formed, had good saltbeen used, and careful management observed, throughout.

"Most certainly, pork is easy to be saved perfectly sweet, if none but good salt be used, and even ordinary care be used in the different packings, more especially in the first, nor should the second packing bo delayed too long. Yet, out of the fifty to an hundred barrels of the best mess pork that I can procure, that are opened on my place, yearly, there is scarcely one of them, when first opened, but that sends forth an intolerable tainted smell, and much of the meat has a strong rancid taste."

So there comes an impasse in duplicating typical period commercial salt pork. We could do it, but we couldn't eat it without acclimating our bodies, a process made more difficult starting in adulthood. The compromise I take is to make the best example, the kind made with good salt and ordinary care as the article says, but one can also be aware of the complaints.

Yet the DeBow's writer apparently kept buying 50+ barrels a year, so the taint was not enough to make him reject the meat as unusable and raise his own. I suspect being able to feed some of the worst to enslaved people helped, though. Surely he wasn't buying 50-100 barrels a year just for his own family.