My wife and I just got our pig back from the butcher, she made a cider brine from a river cottage book we have. We left the brine on the kitchen side overnight to cool. Our kitchen is a steady 20c. In the morning we cut up both hams, most of which was soaked in the brine and a 1.3kg chunk was put into a salt box. I hadn't read about the curing techniques, my wife read the books whilst I was dealing with the sausages. She said that we could leave the brine soaked meat and the salt box on the side in the kitchen. I woke up in the middle of the night about 14 hours after putting the meat into brine and salt box. I started thinking about this temperature, so I started to read the books and both the recipes say to keep the meat in a cool area whilst salting/brining. I wouldn't say 20c is cool and the brine would have been 20c when we started. My wife is always complaining about the house being to cold, we have very different ideas about a comfortable room temperature.
Have we ruined our meat before we have even started?
