#7 - CORNED MEAT - Venison, Elk, Turkey
This size batch of Brine will easily cure 4 to 5 pounds of meat.

Corning Meat. This is one of the easiest ways to make special treats for dinner. Not only is it easy, but it takes no special equipment such as grinders and sausage stuffer tubes and no casings needed either. The cure being used (sodium nitrate) has the ability to change the flavor of the meat that is being cured. Try different meats and you will agree, why didn't I know about this sooner? Very easy, very good. You can't go wrong. Venison and Elk come out remarkably as good as any Corned Beef you ever bought at the market. Use any cut of the meat. Beef is usually made from the brisket. Wild Game can be made from any nice piece of meat that is trimmed up into a a nice clean shape. I use the arm part of the front leg of Deer and find it excellent as a Corned Meat. Turkey thighs may also be used and tastes remarkably the same as Corned Beef.

*NOTE* Take this same brine without the pickling spices and you can make a nice piece of meat very similar to a good ham. After being cured properly in the brine, simply cook in your smoker until done. The brine will take care of the flavor and the texture, your smoke cooker will get it fully cooked, cook the meat to a 175 degree internal temperature. Using some common sense and some initiative to make some very good meals from this one idea. Use a gallon glass jug. Mix up the brine and add the meat of your choice and let it sit in the refrigerator until done.
Make several pieces at one time. Cook one fresh for dinner and place the others in Zip Lock Freezer bags and freeze them for another time.
Corned Meat is cooked until done and tender in boiling water.

5 pints of water
1 1/2 ounces- - - - - - - - - - - -Powder Cure.
1 tsp. Garlic Juice or equivalent amount of fresh crushed Garlic.
4 oz. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Plain Salt.
1 1/2 ounces- - - - - - - - - - - -Powdered Dextrose.
1/4 cup- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -good Pickling Spices.

Mix all dry ingredients, except the pickling spices, and fully dissolve into the water. Then add in the Pickling Spices. Place into gallon jug and add your meats of choice. You can do several pieces of meat at once. Put into the brine and place into refrigerator until done. Less than two inches of meat thickness - cures for 3 days *** 3 to 4 inches of meat thickness cures in 4 to 5 days, etc.

 HOME MADE PASTRAMI
How about a good Pastrami? Use the same Corned Meat and cook it in your oven or smoker with dry heat.
Take your piece of meat from the brine, rub liberally on all sides with a mixture of Coarse Black Pepper, Coriander and paprika. Place in smokehouse or oven at 130 degrees. Hold this temperature for about 1 hour or until the surface of the meat is dry. Increase temperature gradually to 200-220 degrees and hold until and internal temperature of 175 - 180 degrees is obtained internally. Remove from oven or smoker and allow to cool for several hours before chilling overnight in refrigerator.
To serve, slice thinly, place into a cooking pan with several cups of water and cook 15 - 20 minutes until steamed and heated throughout.
Serve as a sandwich on Rye Bread with some mustard of your choice.

IMPORTANT INFORMATION ON SMOKING AND CURING MEATS

"Venison Sausage Recipes and Smoking Fish and Wild Fowl"
by Rytek Kutas "America's Formost Sausage Maker"

Copyright 1990 by Richard Kutas Probably the least-understood subject in the world today is the curing of processed meats and sausage. I think it would be safe to say that not one person in 50,000 really knows what is happening when a piece of meat is being cured.

In a national magazine, I actually read some do-it-yourselfer calling a dried-out piece of meat a cured product. Nothing could be further from the truth.

References to the use of nitrate as a cure can be traced back several hundred years. When using nitrate to cure meat, it combines with the pigment of the meat to form a pink color and flavor the meat as well.

Flavor in what way? To give you an example about flavoring the meat, let us consider the leg of a hog, better known as ham to most people. The leg of pork when cooked or roasted is, pure and simple, roast pork. However, when this very same pork is injected or pickled in brine, it now becomes "ham" after being boiled or cooked in a smokehouse.

What a difference in flavor we have between roast pork and boiled or smoked ham! It is the nitrite that has the ability to impart these special flavors. Without its use, there would be no hams, bacons, picnics, or Canadian Bacon, and all we would have is pieces of cooked or roast pork. Additionally, nitrites also help to prevent rancidity in the storage of meats.

Most important of all, nitrite protects the meat products from the deadly toxin known as botulism. The botulism poisoning we are talking about is the most deadly form of food poisoning known to man.

Very simply diagnosed, your vision is blurred in less than a day. You have trouble holding up your head, as your neck muscles are not working very well. A little while later, you have difficulty in speaking. All the neck and throat muscles do not function, and you see everything double. This is then followed by the failure of chest and diaphragm muscles, cardiac arrest, and then pulmonary failure.

It's all over in about three days if not detected. This is botulism, or food poisoning:insidious, painful and deadly. Worst of all, botulism can produce its deadly toxin even without a foul odor or other sign of contamination. Botulism spores are the most resistant forms of life known to man.

Cures are critical in the manufacture of smoked and cooked meat to prevent food poisoning. Botulism spores are found in every type of meat or vegetable. They are harmless and cause no problems. Lack of oxygen, low acidity, proper nutrients, moisture, and temperatures in the range of 40 degrees F. to 140 degrees F., however, are where the problems begin.

It becomes obvious that sausage and meat are consistently smoked in these temperature ranges. The sausages are moist, and the smoke or heat eliminate the oxygen-perfect conditions for food poisoning if you do not use cures.

For home use, however, you should not confuse the cooking of meat in your oven with smoking meat in a smoker. Most ovens will build up a 200 degree F. temperature on the "low" setting, and most people start baking well over that temperature. This high starting temperature prevents botulism spores from surviving. This information is only meant to impress you with the fact that when you smoke meat at a low temperature, the real possibility of food poisoning is present.

Often I've had people tell me that their grandparents didn't use cures when smoking meats, since some people feel cures are not necessary. Would a person so young really know what his grandparents were doing? Probably not.

Or better still, back in the good ol' days, how many people died of natural causes? An excuse a physician would give you when he couldn't diagnose why the person died, no matter how old or young the patient was, was that the cause was "natural." Fortunately for us the physician today can easily diagnose food poisoning problems, and this book was written to help avoid them.

In much simpler terms, how many times have you read about food poisoning around Thanksgiving and other holidays? The well-intentioned cook decides to make the dressing for the turkey the night before. This gives her more time to do many other important things the next day. She stuffs the turkey the night before, and places it in the refrigerator to be cooked the next day.

Unfortunately, she doesn't know she is creating ideal conditions for food poisoning. Obviously, the stuffing that she puts into the turkey is somewhere between 40 and 140 degrees F. Because the various parts of dressing have some sort of liquid in them, the moisture is also there. Lastly, she sews up the turkey to create a lack of oxygen in its cavity.

It is simple to create food poisoning: proper temperatures of 40-140 degrees F., moisture, and lack of oxygen. To be sure, whenever you smoke any kind of product in the low range of 40-140 degrees F., it should be cured. If you can't cure it, don't smoke it. It doesn't matter if it's meat, fish, poultry, cheese, or vegetable; don't take the chance. It's a pretty good bet that anything you will smoke has some moisture in it. You are removing oxygen when smoking the product and the temperatures are ideal.
Do not forget this one cardinal rule;

IF IT CAN'T BE CURED, DON'T SMOKE IT.

Most nitrite used in curing meat disappears from the product after it has accomplished its curing effects. Within two weeks after curing, the amount of nitrite remaining in a product may be as little as one-fourth the amount initially added to it. Cured meat products typically contain 10-40 parts per million (PPM) at the time of purchase.

Your mouth and your intestines manufacture nitrite, and there is some evidence that our intestines' nitrite prevents us from poisoning ouselves with the very food we eat every day, since there is moisture in the stomach, lack of oxygen, and correct temperatures for food poisoning.

Furthermore, there has been some evidence of crib deaths when the infant was not able to manufacture enough nitrite in its system and, consequently, died of food poisoning. (-an article in a trade magazine written by a physician.)

Even more interesting, just to name a few nitrite-containing vegetables, plain old beets have been found to contain 2,700 PPM of nitrite; celery, 1,600 to 2,600 PPM; lettuce, 100 to 1,400 PPM; radishes, 2,400 to 3,000 PPM; potatoes, 120 PPM; zuchini squash, 600 PPM. The source for these nitrites in the vetables comes from nitrogen fertilizers. It is nitrogen that helps to produce the green color in vegetables and to make them grow faster.

It makes little difference whether you fertilize your vegetable garden out of a bag of chemicals or cow manure. The chemical end result will be the same - nitrogen equals nitrate.