Curing and Cured Meat or Fish
The process of preserving foods
Cured basically means preserved, and is a term usually applied to meat and fish.
The usual method of curing is by salting (eg salami, bacon), before sometimes smoking (eg arbroath smokies) or air-drying (eg iberico ham).
The process of smoking and drying will complement the effects of the cure and give a higher level of preservation.
Foods can be dry cured or wet cured. The first involves covering the food in salt to draw out the moisture, or including a high level of salt in the ingredients to achieve the same effect.
Wet curing can either mean soaking in brine, or having brine injected into the food. This latter technique has often been abused in food manufacturing to bulk up the weight, and therefore sale value, of the preserved product. The effects of this are most commonly seen in the white 'scum' which oozes out of some bacon when fried.
Curing was originally a method of extending the usefulness of meat, by delaying decay before the advent of refrigeration or freezing, but as curing processes inevitably alter the flavour of the ingredient - usuall drastically - the results have often come to be appreciated as delicacies in their own right.
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