Curing & Charcuterie at Home

Prosciutto, bresaola, pancetta, biltong. Some of the best meat in the world is made by salting it and hanging it up — and this ancient craft is now yours to master.

It was never the salt that stopped people. It was knowing when the meat was ready. Your Meatdryer hook handles that: it follows the recipe, weighs the meat as it dries, and reads the temperature and humidity around it. When it's ready, it tells you.

No experience required. Hang it in a kitchen, a cellar, a garage, an attic or outdoors — what you can hang, and when, depends more on the cut than on the room.

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Without the guesswork

The hook is what makes this straightforward at home. It takes the guesswork out — and there is more of it than people expect.

Finding the right salt level is an art, and it is hard to get right without guidance. Too little and the meat won't keep. Too much and you've made something nobody wants to eat. It depends on the cut, the method and what you're making, and it is the first place people go wrong.

Then there's knowing when to take it down. Meat doesn't dry at a steady rate — it loses weight quickly at the start and slowly at the end, and how fast depends on the air around it. Too dry, and the outside hardens into a shell before the middle has lost anything, so the moisture is trapped and the piece never finishes. Too humid, and it doesn't dry at all — mould takes the surface instead.

And ready isn't one number. A pancetta you're going to fry is done while it still holds most of its weight. A biltong you'll eat as it is has to go a great deal further. Every recipe carries its own target, and the only way to know you've reached it is to weigh.

That is the whole job of the hook. It holds the recipe, weighs the meat as it dries, reads the temperature and humidity around it, and tells you when you're there — and flags the drift while there is still time to correct it.

The ancient method

Salt draws water out of the meat, and water is what anything trying to spoil it needs. Take enough of it away and what's left keeps. That much is simple, and people worked it out long before anyone knew why it worked.

Everything after that is knowledge — the kind that took generations to gather. How much salt for this cut. Which spices, in what proportion, rubbed on when. How long, and in what climate, and what to do when the weather turns. An Italian nonna making pancetta is drawing on four hundred years of other people's mistakes, and almost none of it was ever written down for her.

Much of it is in the app now. Recipes from around the world with the reasoning behind them, so you can start where other people finished.

The process, in short:

  • 1 — Start with what you want to make, or with what you have

    Two ways in. If you already know — a pancetta you love, a bresaola you've been meaning to try — pick the recipe first, then find the cut: your butcher, a farm nearby, or your own hunt. If you don't know yet, look in the fridge or the freezer and let the app tell you what that piece can become. Working with game? We've mapped which cut becomes what.

    Which cut becomes what

  • 2 — Salt it

    Two ways here as well: equilibrium curing, where you weigh the salt to the meat, or dry salting, where the meat sits buried in it. For jerky and biltong the marinade does salt and spice in one step — soy sauce brings its own. The recipe gives the amount.

  • 3 — Add the spices

    Pepper, juniper, fennel, garlic, whatever the recipe calls for. Often with a little oil or vinegar first — it helps the spices hold, and it looks after the surface while the meat dries.

  • 4 — Hang it, and watch it

    On the hook, or beside it. From here it's the recipe, the weight and the climate, and you have all three on your phone.

  • 5 — Eat it. Then do it better

    Salt level, spice, how far you took the weight — those are taste, not rules. Write down what you did in the Lab, change one thing next time, and you'll have a house style within a year.

About the salt

Most of what's here needs nothing but salt. Coarse, and not iodised.

Some recipes call for a curing salt instead — sold as nitrite salt, pink salt, or by a number. It exists for reasons that matter most in commercial production: long shelf lives, vacuum packing, months between the factory and the shelf. It also holds the red colour people expect from a supermarket slice. Recipes that need it say so, and they say how much.

Store-bought charcuterie usually contains it. Making your own means you decide exactly what goes in — and for a whole muscle hung in moving air at home, plenty of traditional recipes have never used it at all. That's our preference where a recipe doesn't ask for more. Where one does, follow the recipe, and follow your national food authority.

Hang it anywhere

A kitchen, an attic, a cellar, a garage, a shed, or outdoors. You do not need a cabinet to start, and you do not need one to get a good result.

What decides where you can hang something is the cut, not the room. Fatty cuts want proper cold — a pancetta or a coppa hung in a warm month will go wrong, and no amount of watching will save it. Lean cuts are the opposite: biltong and jerky have been dried in open air in South Africa for centuries, and a warm dry week is exactly what they want.

So the honest answer to where can I hang it is another question — what are you making, and what month is it? Pick the cut to suit the space you have, and you can start this weekend.

What you can hang
When
What you need
What it costs

In your home

A fridge or a curing chamber

Outdoors

Most things, in the coolest still room you have — a cellar, an attic, a pantry

Anything, including the fatty cuts

Lean cuts — biltong, jerky, thin strips

Autumn through spring

All year

When the weather is dry and cool enough

Somewhere the air moves and the meat is left alone

A shelf rail to hang from. A spare fridge is the usual meat curing chamber for home

The protective net, always. Flies find meat faster than you would believe

Nothing

What you have already spent, or a build

Nothing, plus the net

Cold smoking adds that extra flavour

Smoke before you hang, not after.

Cold smoke is kept cool enough that the meat never begins to cook, so it takes on the flavour and still dries the way it should afterwards. Hot smoke would cook it, and a cooked piece is finished — it cannot go on to become charcuterie.

It comes after the salt, never instead of it. The smoke adds taste; the cure does the work. Alder, beech, oak, fruit woods — each one tastes different, and that is most of the fun.

One side effect worth knowing: smoke discourages mould, which is why a smoked ham and a salami hanging in the same place behave quite differently.

There are four ways in, and the first one costs almost nothing.

What it is
What it takes
Best for

Smoke in a grill you own

A cold smoke generator

Build a smoke box

A cold smoker

Wood dust or a smoke coil on a tray, in a covered grill or a closed box

A small unit that smoulders on its own for hours, put into any closed space

A cupboard or box you make yourself, with the smoke source kept separate

A cabinet built for it, with the smoke generator part of the machine

Almost nothing — a handful of wood and an afternoon

One inexpensive part

A weekend, and some scrap

Plug it in

Finding out whether you like it

Most people, most of the time

Anyone who wants the room and the control

Doing it often enough to want it ready

What people make

  • Ham and whole muscle

    Prosciutto, serrano, coppa, lonzino, bresaola. A single muscle, salted, spiced and hung until it has lost the weight the recipe asks for. The slowest of the three and the most rewarding — a whole ham can hang for the better part of a year.

  • Sausage and salami

    Salami, chorizo, saucisson, spickekorv. Minced, seasoned, cased and hung. Tie it with twine so it hangs straight and dries evenly, and expect weeks rather than months.

  • Wild game

    Venison, wild boar, moose, roe deer. Lean, which makes it forgiving about temperature and quick to dry. If you hang your own you are already halfway there — the hook takes over the counting.

Curing or dry aging?

They look alike from the outside — meat hanging in cold air, losing weight, getting better. The difference is the salt.

Curing starts with it. Salt goes on before anything is hung, and it is what makes the meat keep. Dry aging adds nothing at all: a cut of beef hangs in cold moving air and its own enzymes do the work, which is a different result and a different reason to do it.

Same hook, same measurements, same question at the end. If you are aging a cut of beef rather than making salami or pancetta, start there instead.

Dry Aging at Home

Questions

Which one do I need?

The Meatdryer Hook is the one to start with — it does the whole job on its own. The Artisan Kit is the premium version: the same measurements, in the brown hook, with an accessory hook and a tool roll to keep it all in.
Do I need the twine and the net?

The twine, yes — tying is part of curing, and it is what makes a piece hang straight and dry evenly instead of sagging against itself. The net, wherever you are hanging somewhere that is not a sealed fridge.
Do I need a curing chamber?

No. A cool still room will do for most of the year, and a spare fridge does the rest. What matters is that you can see what the conditions are — which is the part the hook handles.
How heavy a piece can it take?

Up to 15 kg hanging from the Meatdryer itself. Above that — a whole ham, a side — hang the meat from a rail on rigid hooks and keep the Meatdryer nearby; it still follows temperature, humidity and time.
Can I do this without curing salt?

For a lot of recipes, yes, and plenty of traditional ones never used it. Where a recipe calls for it, it says so and it says how much. You decide what goes in.
Is mould normal?

White, powdery mould is normal and wanted. It is the same thing you see on a supermarket salami or the rind of a brie, and it protects the surface while the meat dries. Grey and green often follow it on a long cure and are usually harmless — the test is the smell, which should be earthy and mushroomy. Black is not, and neither is anything that smells wrong. That piece goes in the bin.

A wipe with vinegar and water takes mould off if you would rather not look at it, and plenty of people simply clean it up at the end. But mould that keeps coming back is telling you something about the air, not about the meat — too humid, not enough movement. That is the part the hook shows you.
The outside has gone hard but the middle is still soft. What happened?

It dried too fast. The surface sealed before the moisture in the middle could get out, so now it is trapped — the piece stops losing weight and never really finishes. It is the most common way a first attempt goes wrong, and it is an air problem rather than a salt problem: too dry, too much movement, or both.

It is not always fatal. Vacuum-sealing the piece and leaving it in the fridge lets the moisture even out through it. Better is not to get there, which is what watching the humidity is for.

Do you want to go deeper?

Curing Meat Before Drying: How to Cure Meat at Home — the full method, salt to shelf.

How to Cure Wild Game: Which Cut Becomes What — if you hang your own.

Dried and Cured Meats Around the World: From Prosciutto to Biltong — where all of this came from.

Read Which cut becomes what