Howdy y’all, does anyone dry brine a slab of pork belly prior to making burnt ends? My rub, Meathead’s Memphis Dust, has no salt. Thank y’all in advance!
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Sure, I’ve dry brined all types of pork. It probably won’t penetrate the skin effectively but the meat proteins benefit from it. -
To control the salt, it is applied first and separate from Meat Head's rub.
Therefore it is a two step process.
Last edited by bbqLuv; July 16, 2021, 06:50 PM.Comment
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The difficulty with dry brining pork belly is that salt doesn't penetrate fat. You can see this clearly on something like a brisket. You can coat the thing with salt and leave it in your fridge. Then when you come back in the morning, you'll find the salt over the red muscle has been absorbed, but the salt on the fat is still there and most of the time still in large kosher grains. Therefore it doesn't even draw out enough water from the fat to dissolve itself.
Being 50% (or sometimes more) fat, the pork belly is difficult to get good salt completely throughout, I've found. With it being so clearly delineated in layers, the fat layers are barriers to salt penetration and even distribution.
I'd suggest, if you really want to experiment, chill that pork belly way down, cube it up and then salt it and leave it overnight. You do have to be careful in this scenario not to oversalt it, as you will have a lot more surface area, and still a much lower than 'normal' meat-to-fat ratio - compared to say a steak or a brisket or something. Don't necessarily want to use a "by weight" formula for the amount of salt to utilize. I never do anyways, just a word of caution.Comment
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