2 weeks of dry bine in the fridge. You only really need a week, but i have a spare fridge in the basement for stuff like this, so the longer the better i guess. 400g salt 200g sugar 60g pink salt 15g garlic 15g pepper 5g pepper flakes is my recipe for the brine. Take 3% of the weight of the pork belly and that is how much of the cure you use. example 3167g of pork belly would use 95g of cure. Spread it around evenly over the belly on both sides. Throw it in a vac bag, seal it up. Every couple of days turn over the belly in the fridge to make sure the cure/brine evenly soaks through.
Looks awesome. I'm actually curing some bellies as we speak. Doing a coffee molasses cure with some fresh roasted coffee from a small single origin roaster here in town. Also, are you using pink salt #1 or #2, only because 3% seems really high. Most recipes I've tried in the past only recommend 0.25 - 0.50% tops.
I've always used the Ruhlman method when calculating salt levels on mine, but if it's working for you and it's not overly salty, keep on doing what's working for you.
Sorry less salt, more cure. But that still doesn't make sense, because you would still have less overall. But i have been told that this is the perfect level of saltyness. But i do wash all the extra cure off before i smoke it.
Ah i see the confusion. You are using 2% salt 0.25% of pink salt. I am using 3% of the cure i made. So i have 695g of total weight of cure. so for 3167g i use 95g of cure. which would be 55g of salt and 8g of pink. Your method would be 63g of salt and 8g of pink. So basically the same.
Math... How DOES it work??? That now makes a lot more sense. I don't measure out the rest of my cure to the percentage/gram other than kosher salt/curing salt. Just go with whatever I 'feel' would be a good amount. Sometimes it works, other times it doesn't. For example, I had the idea once to try and make a "hop bacon" and crushed up some hop pellets from a home-brewer friend of mine. Turns out that unless you're using them in their intended application, it just makes the bacon taste like dirt. Do not recommend.