I've been experimenting with different ways of making tasso. I wasn't raised anywhere near Cajun country, so I've had to figure things out via cookbooks, YouTube videos, and online recipes. I had my first decent batch this past weekend, so I thought I'd post the technique and results. I'd also like to say "thank you" to the folks on this forum who patiently answered my meat-curing questions over the last two months or so.
If you're unfamiliar with tasso, it's a seasoning meat created by the Cajun culture in Louisiana. As a folk recipe, it has a lot of variations. As far as I can tell, it began as scrap strips of pork that were coated in spices and smoked to preserve them, similar to jerky. Modern recipes call for curing the meat prior to smoking it.
Tasso is used sparingly in dishes such as jambalaya, red beans & rice, and shrimp & grits. It's the star attraction of chef-created restaurant fare such as shrimp & pasta in tasso cream sauce. Tasso adds a flavor and complexity that is hard to imagine if you've never tried it. It's similar to adding bacon to a recipe, but has a much bigger impact on the results. I became interested in learning how to make it after an extended business assignment to Baton Rouge some years ago.
Here it is, fresh off the smoker.
The most common tasso recipes floating around the internet use dry-cure techniques that make it hard to control the percentage of sodium nitrite in the meat. They are also way too salty for my taste. After reading Meathead's "the science of curing meat" article, and asking around on this forum for wet-curing advice, I realized I needed a technique that would fit my business-travel work schedule without creating a tasso that was too salty. The problem is that tasso is supposed to be dry, so wet-curing adds a moisture content that you have to deal with one way or another. Here's what I landed on:
- Wet curing at a 6% salt concentration
- Tasso rub with less than the usual amount of salt
- Let the rub sit on the meat for two hours prior to smoking to start drawing moisture out
- Dry-smoke it at 225 F until the meat hits 170 degrees
Cure recipe:
- 2.5 lbs of boneless pork shoulder, cut into 1.5 inch thick strips
- 2 qts distilled water
- 6 Tbs Morton's kosher salt
- 6 Tbs brown sugar
- Prague powder per the cure calculator (2 tsp in my case)
Tasso spice mix:
- 3 Tbs paprika
- 2 Tbs Morton's kosher salt
- 2 Tbs brown sugar
- 1 Tbs allspice
- 4 tsp garlic powder
- 4 tsp cayenne
- 4 tsp ground black pepper
- 4 tsp white pepper
Whisk the water, salt, cure, and sugar in a non-reactive bowl until everything is dissolved. Add the meat to a two-gallon ziplock bag and add the wet cure. Seal the bag while squeezing the air out as much as possible. Cure the pork in the refrigerator for the amount of time given by the cure calculator, flipping the bag daily.
This recipe is adapted from the Canadian bacon cure on this site, with the cure calculator used to yield 200ppm nitrite concentration. I measured the salinity at 6% using one of those optical salinity scopes (inexpensive from Amazon). Due to my travel schedule, the meat cured for five days. My wife was in charge of flipping the bag for me.
Remove and rinse the meat. Pat it dry. Coat the meat well with the tasso spice mix and let it rest for two hours in the refrigerator. Prepare your smoker while the meat is resting.
My rig is a Weber kettle with a Slow-N-Sear. For tasso, it's important to use NO WATER in the smoker. Prior batches turned out a soggy mess using water in the smoker. It took me some trial runs to figure out the temperature control without water. It's more work to baby-sit the rig using a dry Slow-N-Sear, but the results are worth it.
Set the smoker to 225 F without wood. Let the tasso cook at 225 for an hour before adding pecan chunks to your charcoal. I found in prior attempts that adding the wood at the beginning creates way too much smoke that overpowers the whole recipe. Smoke until the internal temperature is 170F. In this case, it took four and a half hours. Binder clips really help keep the temperature steady by sealing up the air leaks around the rim of the kettle.
This recipe and dry-smoking technique resulted in almost exactly what I was looking for. It's salty, smoky, and spicy, as it should be, but balanced. The spice crust was dry and hard, which I wanted.
The one problem was the meat was still a bit moist. When I vac-sealed the strips for storage, some moisture was pulled out of the meat. This softens the spice crust. In future attempts, I'll try to let the salt and spice rub work a half day or more to pull more moisture out of the pork.
I hope this is interesting or useful to the next guy who wants to make some tasso. Also, I know that my spice mix may raise some eyebrows among folks who were raised Cajun. If there's any interest, I'll explain my spice choices in a follow up comment.
If you're unfamiliar with tasso, it's a seasoning meat created by the Cajun culture in Louisiana. As a folk recipe, it has a lot of variations. As far as I can tell, it began as scrap strips of pork that were coated in spices and smoked to preserve them, similar to jerky. Modern recipes call for curing the meat prior to smoking it.
Tasso is used sparingly in dishes such as jambalaya, red beans & rice, and shrimp & grits. It's the star attraction of chef-created restaurant fare such as shrimp & pasta in tasso cream sauce. Tasso adds a flavor and complexity that is hard to imagine if you've never tried it. It's similar to adding bacon to a recipe, but has a much bigger impact on the results. I became interested in learning how to make it after an extended business assignment to Baton Rouge some years ago.
Here it is, fresh off the smoker.
The most common tasso recipes floating around the internet use dry-cure techniques that make it hard to control the percentage of sodium nitrite in the meat. They are also way too salty for my taste. After reading Meathead's "the science of curing meat" article, and asking around on this forum for wet-curing advice, I realized I needed a technique that would fit my business-travel work schedule without creating a tasso that was too salty. The problem is that tasso is supposed to be dry, so wet-curing adds a moisture content that you have to deal with one way or another. Here's what I landed on:
- Wet curing at a 6% salt concentration
- Tasso rub with less than the usual amount of salt
- Let the rub sit on the meat for two hours prior to smoking to start drawing moisture out
- Dry-smoke it at 225 F until the meat hits 170 degrees
Cure recipe:
- 2.5 lbs of boneless pork shoulder, cut into 1.5 inch thick strips
- 2 qts distilled water
- 6 Tbs Morton's kosher salt
- 6 Tbs brown sugar
- Prague powder per the cure calculator (2 tsp in my case)
Tasso spice mix:
- 3 Tbs paprika
- 2 Tbs Morton's kosher salt
- 2 Tbs brown sugar
- 1 Tbs allspice
- 4 tsp garlic powder
- 4 tsp cayenne
- 4 tsp ground black pepper
- 4 tsp white pepper
Whisk the water, salt, cure, and sugar in a non-reactive bowl until everything is dissolved. Add the meat to a two-gallon ziplock bag and add the wet cure. Seal the bag while squeezing the air out as much as possible. Cure the pork in the refrigerator for the amount of time given by the cure calculator, flipping the bag daily.
This recipe is adapted from the Canadian bacon cure on this site, with the cure calculator used to yield 200ppm nitrite concentration. I measured the salinity at 6% using one of those optical salinity scopes (inexpensive from Amazon). Due to my travel schedule, the meat cured for five days. My wife was in charge of flipping the bag for me.
Remove and rinse the meat. Pat it dry. Coat the meat well with the tasso spice mix and let it rest for two hours in the refrigerator. Prepare your smoker while the meat is resting.
My rig is a Weber kettle with a Slow-N-Sear. For tasso, it's important to use NO WATER in the smoker. Prior batches turned out a soggy mess using water in the smoker. It took me some trial runs to figure out the temperature control without water. It's more work to baby-sit the rig using a dry Slow-N-Sear, but the results are worth it.
Set the smoker to 225 F without wood. Let the tasso cook at 225 for an hour before adding pecan chunks to your charcoal. I found in prior attempts that adding the wood at the beginning creates way too much smoke that overpowers the whole recipe. Smoke until the internal temperature is 170F. In this case, it took four and a half hours. Binder clips really help keep the temperature steady by sealing up the air leaks around the rim of the kettle.
This recipe and dry-smoking technique resulted in almost exactly what I was looking for. It's salty, smoky, and spicy, as it should be, but balanced. The spice crust was dry and hard, which I wanted.
The one problem was the meat was still a bit moist. When I vac-sealed the strips for storage, some moisture was pulled out of the meat. This softens the spice crust. In future attempts, I'll try to let the salt and spice rub work a half day or more to pull more moisture out of the pork.
I hope this is interesting or useful to the next guy who wants to make some tasso. Also, I know that my spice mix may raise some eyebrows among folks who were raised Cajun. If there's any interest, I'll explain my spice choices in a follow up comment.
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