Morton's TenderQuick & BBB

I have used it several times to make canadian bacon. I don't know about the buckboard bacon. I take a pork loin half (or two). and put it in a ziploc with one cup Morton's and one cup sugar. Pop it in the fridge for three or four days, turning the bag over daily. Then rinse the loins (or soak them and rinse for less salty). Cook em on the egg with as much wood chunk as you like. Done, slice and vacuum seal for the freezer. Heck of a good fried with breakfast.

I use it all the time for Canadian-style bacon: http://www.food-fire.com/index.php/2009/02/03/more-canadian-style-bacon/.

I just got done using to make 2 butts worth of cottage/buckboard bacon. Good stuff but I don't have any photos ready yet.

Basically I used 1 tablespoon Morton Sugar Cure (Plain) per pound plus 1 teaspoon white sugar per pound and let this cure for 7 days. I soaked them for 3 hours in clear water, and then stored them in the fridge overnight. The next day I smoked them at 225°F until they hit 140°F.

I let them cool and then sliced and bagged. Tasty stuff.

Let me know if you have nay questions.

Dave

As I read more and look at the Morton products they all have sugar. So guess I'll be making a cure with Prague Powder No.1 and whatever spices I come up with.

I think sugar might be pretty intrinsic to the curing processes, as I've never seen a wet cure without it, but I'm really not sure.

You could certainly dry cure with salt and herbs and air dry it, but that's a different product. Might be fun, though. More prosciutto than bacon.

Not sure what the nature of your adversity is, but if it's a diabetic/simple carb issue, you might be okay as you're probably only retaining half the sugar in the cure due to the soaking process. If the issue is with sugar per se, then you could try honey, molasses or maple syrup instead.

Good luck and let us know how it goes.

Thanks Dave.

Tenderquick has been around for a long time and I have used it in various applications for 30 years. Interestingly enough although TQ was marketed as a "home curing" product, all the early methods discussed large quantities of meat. The Morton Salt Book's dry cure method for loins calls for 6 pounds of TQ per 100 pounds of meat, and the application is a three part delivery. 1/3 is applied, then in two or three hours the second 1/3 is applied, then twenty four hours later the remainder is applied. They mention an overhaul halfway through the process, and call for 10 days of curing time. No mention of a soak out or equalization steps.

Motron's engineers kind of give canned responses when visiting with them on the phone. Usually saying things like, "use a tried and proven method with our products", from my experience they are not real good at shooting from the hip.

All that said, there are tons of home curing folks that ust TQ in the 1 tablespoon per pound ratio, adding sugar and other spices to their taste. I used it on loins prior to switching to Hi Mountain's cure. And I honestly don't recall using it on butts as I believe that Hi Mountain was the one that opened my eyes to anything other than loin bacon. I used to add sugar, garlic powder and black pepper to the base cure. My curing times were about the same as I use now, I always turned more frequently than once, and I have always done a soak out and rest.

I have a couple of bags of TQ I use for other things, so the next time I do some Buckboard, I'll do a side-by-side.

Bill,

It has always been my understanding that the sugar acts to buffer the harshness of the salt, and adds some back flavor along the way. Like Dave mentioned, I don't think it's essential to the process, but let me check that out. I have tons of information on curing.

It's possible that an alternative for you may be using a sweet pickle cure, which is a liquid brine. Maybe the amounts of sugar could be lessened because of the liquid delivery verses the dry cure delivery. I'll look into that approach too. Another thought here (and I'm really speculating).... I use honey as the sweetener in my pastramied turkey breasts which are injected with a curing brine that Old Dave helped me with. Maybe there is an option worth looking into here.

Do you have issues with honey?

Bill,

I checked a couple of my curing books, and all mentions of sugar in dry and wet cures seem to be to knock the edge off any harshness of salt. One mentions using a finer sugar, because less is needed..... but that statement is actually reminding us that with fine grains you would get more sugar than the same measure using a regular grind. (maybe 3/4 of a tablespoon of fine would equal 1 tablespoon of regular grind)

Looking at different recipes, some of the cures for belly bacon have a lot more sugar than ones for Canadian (loin) bacon. So, it sounds like you need to experiment on your own.

Neither TQ or Buckboard list the actual percent of sugar in their product, TQ lists only "sugar" as an ingredient, Buckboard lists "brown sugar and maple sugar". TQ has a total of 1% nitrate & nitrite, Buckboard has 0.7% nitrite. From my experience in talking to both Morton's and Hi Mountain, the folks at Hi Mountain are a little easier with the information. (of course I identify myself as a Wyomingite and a longtime user of their products and that might help) Just off the cuff here I'm betting the percentage of sugar in TQ is lower than Buckboard, because all cure recipes that call for TQ also call for additional sugar. Buckboard is ready to go right out of the box.