The meat delicacies sold in stores have two significant drawbacks: the enormous price and often unsatisfactory taste. The second is more scary: it's a shame to lay out a round sum and remain disappointed with your purchase. Pork basturma alone is devoid of both defects: at home, it is cooked easily, although for a long time, and the taste can be tailored to your preferences. The delicacy will cost 2-3 times cheaper than the purchased one.
Pork basturma at home: how to cook?
There are many different ways of cured meat with its previous salting. And after each, a great pork basturma is obtained. The step-by-step culinary recipe used most often looks like this:
- A good piece of meat is washed, dried and cut into narrow strips. Tentatively - two fingers in height and 3-4 in width. The length is not important here.
- At the next stage, you can use only salt (always coarse and not iodized!). But for aroma, it is usually mixed with spices: laurel, pepper, zira, etc. This composition is carefully rubbed into the meat from all sides.
- The container is closed with a lid or tightened with foil and placed on the bottom of the refrigerator for two days. Twice a day, the meat needs to be turned over and the water released is drained.
- Pork is rinsed with water, wiped and whole-heartedly crumbled in spices, after which it is suspended in a draft for two weeks.
If it happens in the summer, pork basturma at home is wrapped with gauze. This is to protect the product from flies. A place for hanging is chosen away from heating appliances and preferably, if not in the dark, then at least in the shade.
Basturma Chaman
Strictly certain seasonings and spices do not require the preparation of pork basturma at home. Each cook has its own rubbing composition. But if you were once conquered by the Armenian version, follow the recipe of this people.
You need to prepare the mixture a day before its use. Half a liter of water is boiled with three leaves of laurel and several peas of allspice. When the broth cools down a little, the spices are removed from it and it is poured into a bowl, where half a tablespoon of ground fenugreek is poured, whole - sugar and black pepper (ground), three - paprika, a teaspoon of salt and ground zira. Two crushed or finely chopped heads of garlic should be added to this. The chaman is put in the cold for 24 hours, after which the future pork basturma is plentifully smeared with it at home. The recipe, by the way, is truncated by many in relation to garlic: not everyone is ready to endure its strong smell for a couple of weeks in the apartment. In this case, a couple of days before readiness, the chaman is peeled off and replaced with a fresh one, already with garlic.
Basturma in brine
This method is more impatient: it takes much less time. A chunk of meat is washed and divided into the strips described above. A brine is being prepared, for which four tablespoons of salt are dissolved in each liter of water. Pork is poured with it, squeezed so as not to pop up, and sent to the refrigerator for a couple of days. Then the brine is drained, the meat strips are wrung out from it and placed under oppression in coolness for at least a day. If the slices are thick enough or there is a lot of pork, it may take three days. The signal for the end of squeezing will be the cessation of water release. Then, the future pork basturma at home with a thick layer is crumbled in selected spices (for example, pepper, coriander, turmeric, hot chili) or spread with a chaman and again suspended in a draft wrapped in gauze. Fans of a soft product will be able to enjoy them in a couple of days. Proponents of maturity should wait 4-5.
Basturma in the oven
Another way to cook a delicacy, which can be called the express method. A kilogram of pork is cut into large long slices and beaten a little. Each slice is sprinkled with apple cider vinegar and rubbed with salt mixed with coriander, sugar and pepper. It oppresses the meat, and it hides at the bottom of the refrigerator, where it should stand for a day. Then the strips are rinsed in a weak solution of apple cider vinegar (five for one part of vinegar - water), squeezed well and sprinkled with spices. For this recipe, it is better not to make a chaman, but use all seasonings dry. The pork is laid out on a grid covered with parchment and put in a heated oven. The temperature is reduced to a minimum, the door is left ajar, otherwise the meat will be baked, not dried. There, pork basturma at home will spend from eight hours: time depends on the desired degree of drying.
Cognac Basturma
To prepare it, you have to spend more money - the required drink is not cheap. However, the result is worth the investment: such a pork basturma at home turns out to be invariably tender and very tasty. 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 are wrapped with gauze and left under the load for the same period. Then a chaman is made, only instead of water, spices are bred in cognac. You can take fortified wine instead, just not too sweet. Chunks are coated with a mixture and dried from a week to two in the already described conditions.
Specialist advice
If you are going to wither basturma, carefully consider the choice of meat. Tenderloin will be an ideal piece, but from any other parts of the carcass the delicacy turns out to be excellent if you cut all the fat sections from the piece. Otherwise, the fat will become stiff, and in these places the basturma will be stiff.