Basturma from pork at home: the best recipes, secrets and tips

Meat delicacies sold in stores have two significant drawbacks: a huge price and often an unsatisfactory taste. The second frightens more: it's a shame to lay out a round sum and remain disappointed with your purchase. Both of the defects are devoid of the hand-made basturma from pork: at home it is prepared easily, although for a long time, and the taste can be adjusted to your preferences. It will cost the same delicacy once in 2-3 cheaper than the purchase.

Basturma from pork at home: how to cook?

There are a lot of different ways of drying the meat with the preceding salting. And after each it turns out magnificent basturma from pork. A step-by-step culinary recipe, used most often, looks like this:

1. A good piece of meat is washed, dried and cut with narrow strips. Approximately two fingers in height and 3-4 in width. The length is just not important here.
2. At the next stage, you can use only salt (necessarily coarse and not iodized!). But for aroma it is usually mixed with spices: laurel, pepper, zira, etc. This compound is carefully rubbed into the meat from all sides.
3. The container is closed with a lid or tightened with a film and placed for two days in the bottom of the refrigerator. Twice a day, meat needs to be turned over and drained of water.
4. Pork is rinsed with water, wiped off and wholeheartedly dropped into spices, after which it is suspended in a draft of the week for two.

If it happens in the summer, the pork basturma turns into gauze at home. This is necessary to protect the product from flies. The place for hanging is selected away from the heating devices and preferably, if not in the dark, then at least in the shade.

Chaman for Basturma

Strictly defined seasonings and spices preparation of basturma from pork at home does not require. Each cook has its own composition for rubbing. But if you were once conquered by the Armenian variant, follow the recipe of this people.

Cooking mixture should be a day before its application. A half liter of water boils with three leaves of the laurel and several peas of sweet pepper. When the broth cools down a little, spices from it are removed and it pours into the bowl, where half a spoonfuls of ground fenugreek are poured, whole - sugar and black pepper (ground), three - paprika, on a teaspoon of salt and ground zira. Here you should add two crushed or finely chopped heads of garlic. Chaman is put on the cold for 24 hours, after which it is plentifully smeared with future pork basturma at home. The recipe, by the way, is truncated by many in regard to garlic: it is not everyone who is prepared to tolerate its strong smell for a couple of weeks in an apartment. In this case, a couple of days before the preparation, the chaman is scraped off and replaced with fresh, already with garlic.

Basturma in brine

This method is more suitable for impatient: it takes much less time. A slice of meat is washed and divided into the strips described above. A brine is prepared, for which four tablespoons of salt dissolve in each liter of water. Pork is poured into it, pressed down so it does not float, and for a couple of days it goes to the refrigerator. Then the brine merges, the meat strips from it are squeezed out and placed under the oppression in the cool for at least a day. If slices are thick enough or pork is large, it may take three days. The end of the squeeze will end with the release of water. Then, the future basturma from pork at home conditions thickly collapses in selected spices (for example, pepper, coriander, turmeric, hot chili) or smeared with chaman and suspended again in a draft wrapped in cheesecloth. Fans of a soft product will be able to regale themselves after a couple of days. Supporters of maturity should wait 4-5.

Basturma in the oven

Another way of cooking delicacy, which can be called an express method. A kilogram of pork is cut into large long slices and fights a bit. Each piece is sprinkled with apple cider vinegar and rubbed with salt mixed with coriander, sugar and pepper. The meat is put under pressure, and it hides to the bottom of the refrigerator, where it must stand a day. Then the stripes are rinsed out in a weak solution of apple cider vinegar (one part of vinegar five - water), squeezed well and sprinkled with spices. For this recipe it is better not to make the chaman, but to use all the seasonings dry. Pork is laid out on a grate, pasted with parchment, and placed in a heated oven. The temperature is reduced to a minimum, the door is left ajar, otherwise the meat will be baked, and not suddle. There, basturma from pork at home will hold from eight hours: the time depends on the desired degree of drying.

Cognac basturma

To make it, you have to spend more seriously - the required drink is not cheap. However, the result is worth the investment: such a basturma from pork at home is always tender and delicious. At first the meat is generously rubbed with salt and put in the cold for two days with the obligatory draining of the leaked juices and turning over. Then the slices wrapped in gauze and left under the load for the same period. Then the chaman is made, only instead of water the spices are dissolved in cognac. You can take a fortified wine instead of it, but not too sweet. The slugs are coated with a mixture and dried for a week or two under the conditions already described.

Advice of a specialist

Going to wither the basturma, carefully consider the choice of meat. The ideal piece will be a tenderloin, but from any other parts of the carcass the delicacy turns out excellent if you cut all the fatty parts out of the piece. Otherwise, the fat will become stiff, and in these places the basturma will be stiff.