Make Your Own Salted Beef Or Pork For Your Rations

[Paul C. Daiute]

Needed: 2 or 3 lbs beef or pork, 3 !/4 lb sea salt, 4 0z, washed raw cane sugar, 1 tsp fresh ground black pepper, optional add on of, ground ginger, corander seeds, cloves nutmeg. 1/6 th of an oz of salt peter may be aded for authenticity if you can figure out a 6th of an oz., it will make the meat pink but harden it up some-what. To make, if your going to use the sugar and spice, add them to the first batch of 1 lb of salt and rub it into one side of the beef or pork, (you can use just the salt if you want), lay the pork or beef salt side down into a crock container and rub the salt or mixture into the up side of the meat. cover the container tightly for a day. On day two you will note a liquid in the container, don't dump it out, add more salt or mixture to both sides of the meat and let stand another 2 or more days. Next dump out and get rid of all the liquid, now salt the meat both sides, (no spices) let stand another 24 hours and then pour off the fluid. next use 2 1/4 lbs of seasalt to a gallon of water to make a brine solution, the meat should float in the solution if it does't, then you shoud add more sesalt till the meat floats. Make sure the meat is submerged, you may have to weigh it down with something. you will want to wrap the weight water tight with a plastic. Seal the tub up and store it in a cool place, no need to refrigerate the container. You might want to check the meat every once in awhile, you may note some white stuff floating on the water and all you need to do is to skim it off and descard it. When you are ready to eat the meat. take it out of the brine and run some fresh water over it and then soak it in fresh cool water one hour for every month the meat was in the brine solution. Change the water as often as you can. When ready to cook, place the meat in your pot make sure you cover it with water and let boil. skim the water and then let the meat simmer for another 4 hours or so. You can do this prior to going out on scout and then reheat the meat while on the trail. Yum, Paul