Meat: The Element of Fire and Earth

Meat is a particular kind of nourishment for me. And I am not speaking here of its undeniable nutritional value, but of something deeper - of a life given so that a family could be fed.

When I was a child, we spent our summers at my grandmother's house in the Polish countryside. I took part in every aspect of real, unfiltered life. I watched my grandmother kill a chicken, dress it and clean it for the Sunday broth. I watched my uncle kill a pig and then, with quiet respect, use every part of its body so that the family would have food for many weeks. Sausages, hams, headcheese, pates and jellies were made. Some went to the smokehouse, some into jars. Nothing was allowed to go to waste.

And no, it was not a traumatic experience for me. It was simply real life, the ordinary prose of living. The animals were cared for, respected and looked after. They were healthy and content. I watched all of these processes with enormous interest, all the more so because in Poland at that time, such products were a luxury, subject to rationing.

Watching my grandmother with the chicken, my uncle and my father making cured meats, gave me something invaluable: the knowledge that I could do all of these things myself, because it is not as difficult as it seems. And do you know what? For the past few years, that is exactly what I do. It was the labels on shop-bought meats that decided it, with their lists of ingredients, because memory kept telling me clearly: my father never added any of that.

Today, when I pick up a piece of meat, I think about it differently than I once did. I give thanks for the sacrifice, for the gift. I no longer ask only where it comes from. I ask whether someone treated that life with the respect my grandmother and uncle demanded. Whether nothing was wasted. Whether the animal had a good life before it became food.

Making my own cured meats is not a hobby for me, nor a return to some fashionable trend of handcraft. It is the recovery of something very specific: a taste I remember and a knowledge that was always mine. The food industry took away our belief that we are capable of doing this ourselves. A label with a list of ingredients I do not recognise reminds me every time that my memory is more accurate than any printed list of contents.

Because my father never added that. And neither do I.

Dry-Cured and Poached Pork Loin

This is a recipe for anyone who wants to try making real cured meat at home, without a smokehouse and without any special equipment. All you need is time and patience.

Ingredients for 1 kg of pork loin:

Curing salt and natural rock salt without anti-caking agents, half and half, approximately 20 g total per kilogram of meat, one teaspoon of raw cane sugar, 2 bay leaves crumbled, 3 allspice berries crushed, a pinch of thyme, a small pinch of granulated garlic or one fresh clove finely grated.

Curing:

Dry the pork loin thoroughly with kitchen paper. Mix all the curing ingredients together in a small bowl. Rub the mixture firmly over the meat from every angle, pressing it into every surface. Place in a sealed plastic container and refrigerate for 4 to 5 days. Turn the meat every day. The juices that collect at the bottom are a natural brine - do not discard them.

Poaching:

After curing, remove the loin from the fridge and rinse gently under cold water. Dry thoroughly. Wrap tightly in several layers of cling film, then in aluminium foil - the aim is to keep every drop of juice inside during poaching. Bring a large pot of water to the boil, then reduce the heat so that the temperature holds steady between 75 and 80 degrees Celsius. The water must not boil - it should only barely simmer. Place the wrapped loin in the pot and poach for 2 to 2.5 hours per kilogram of meat. Keep an eye on the temperature throughout. When the time is up, remove the loin from the pot but do not unwrap it. Leave to cool completely, ideally overnight in the fridge.

Only the following day, unwrap and slice thinly with a sharp knife.

The result is something entirely different from anything you will find in a shop. Juicy, firm, with a clean flavour in which every spice makes itself known. No preservatives, no fillers, no ingredients you cannot place.

Exactly as it should be.