If not cooking outdoors, I am cooking on the stovetop with my 14" carbon steel wok, 12" CI skillet, or in the oven with my two Lodge CI pizza pans, or two dutch ovens. I've also got a nifty Lodge carbon steel grill pan that rocks for veggies outdoors.
Yeah - this is just a really stupid marketing ploy, as they use celery juice as the source of nitrate/nitrite rather than just using pink curing salt. End result is the same. Every time I see "uncured" on stuff at the store it kinda pisses me off, as I know it is a freaking lie...
John "JR"
Minnesota/ United States of America
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"People often ask if they can cure meats without nitrites and just increase the salt. Salt inhibitsbot’s growth, but won’t kill it. Neither will vinegar. You should not attempt to cure meat at home without a curing salt. There are some “natural” or “no nitrite” cured meats on the market, but if you look closely at the label, they often have some sort of extract of celery in them because it contains nitrate which can convert to nitrite. There are recipes for “curing” that don’t use nitrites, so technically they are not really cures, and they cannot kill bot so they must never be submerged in wet cures. I consider them risky."
I'm not sure about the legitimacy of referring to something cured with celery as "uncured" -- but meat-cutters and sausage makers speak different languages sometimes. I can't count the number of times a customer asked for what we were advertising as "Fresh Brats" only to see that they were still partially frozen. I'd have to explain that in the world of sausage making, "fresh" mean not smoked or otherwise cooked and has nothing to do with freezing. Perhaps the etymology of cured vs uncured and nitrites vs celery-based nitrites has a similar origin.
With respect to labeling, fresh has everything to do with freezing. Something that is being sold as fresh means it should not have ever been frozen. Since meat freezes at 25.5 degrees regulations state that the temperature should not drop under 26 degrees in order to be labeled as fresh.
Yup - playing games with wording, playing on people's prejudices and the latest fad. Marketing people disgust me a lot of times - but we're suckers and we fall for it.
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