10/15/2017 – Cut and deboned half of a pork butt bought yesterday for $1.29/lb. Smoked the larger part of it today and shook on cure per the cure calculator that provided the values below. This was our first dry-cure of tasso and after 16 days it the meat was well cured and not hard to add rub, dry them smoke. Resulted in a mild flavor of smoked ham with noticeable seasoning but not spicy. It will be good additions to dishes as desired.

Meat – 2138 gm (4.7 lbs)
Cure No. 1 – 5.34 gm
Salt (table) – 37.76 gm
Sugar – 21.38 gm

Spread the meat on a baking pan and sprinkled on the cure mixture. Put some on one side, flipped and sprinkled some on, then repeated. Put into a stainless steel mixing bowl and covered with foil pushed down into the bowl to minimize the airspace.

When Mary checked it to re-mix, she found the foil had “corroded” and tainted the meat the foil was touching. Threw those pieces out, remixed and covered with plastic wrap. Remixed about every other day. Replaced foil with plastic wrap.

Saturday, October 21, we dumped it on a baking sheet and remixed. Places on many pieces were reddish pink of the fresh meat but the majority was grey. With the pieces that were folded, the inside of the fold was red some outside the fold were grey. Some pieces that were against the SS bowl were reddish where they were against the bowl. Was the grey color due to cure or oxygen? We moved to a plastic storage container and pressed plastic wrap against the top to keep as much oxygen out as possible.

10/31/2017 – Halloween Night – About 2 PM Mary spread the pieces on wire racks over baking sheets and seasoned them with Creole Seasoning. They dried in the refer until I got home from work about 6:30 PM. She had started the MES to preheat to 250 about 5:45.

6:45 PM – The Amazen Tray is smoking on both corners with pecan pellets when we added the meat on the wire racks and the smoking tray to the MES.

7:15 – Reset the MES to 225 as the grate temp per the Chefworks is 190.

7:45 – Grate temp is 187. Raised MES set to 250.

8:15 – Grate temp is 218

9:00 – Grate temp is 213. Raised MES to 265

10:00 PM – Grate temp is 227. Pulled meat to cool inside. Once cool put into a ziplock bag to vac pack tomorrow.

If we want the next batch more like what is sold in LA then need to add more peppers. Also, should not have raised the temp to 265 as I think that overcooked and dried it out too much.