Here’s an idea I saw first over at Hunter Angler Gardener Cook. After I started my one-egg experiment, I looked up some different takes on this process. From Belly to Bacon uses a shorter salting time, but is basically the same, and deserves a mention for the phrase “cheese cloth scrotal apparatus” alone. You have to cook it right, on the other hand, used a salt/sugar cure mixture, going off the recipe in Charcutería: The Soul of Spain. I like the simplicity of just using yolks and salt, but I can’t actually ignore the opportunity to tinker with sweetness and spices.
Yesterday, I took that first yolk out of its jar of salt. It’d been only six days, but sometimes you get antsy to see how things are turning out. It was firm enough to pick up easily and to hold its shape, but seemed like it would squish and smear if I applied much pressure. I don’t have cheesecloth around right now, so I popped it into a coffee filter and returned it to the fridge to dry out. I’m feeling very lucky to have eggs from backyard chickens to play with; the yolks are gorgeous.
It seemed a pity to waste the used salt, so I popped it into the toaster oven to bake some of the moisture back out of it. I also added a little ground coriander and toasted that with the salt. This yolk received a sprinkle of black pepper before it was encased in salt, in hopes that the contact would help the flavor sink in. As a sweetener, I mixed date molasses in with the salt, because the flavor seemed like it might be a good match with the rich yolk and the coriander. Will it turn out to have been a terrible plan to use a syrup in a salt-curing project, because it adds misture? I have no idea, but I’ll find out in two weeks!
sharply dentate 