What is a curing house?

The word curing house has two meanings. It is first a preservation process: meat is covered in salt to draw out its water, which preserves it and concentrates its aromas. It is also the place, the workshop or the company, where this transformation is carried out and from which saucissons, hams and other cured products emerge.

The two meanings meet: a curing house is a business that practises curing.

Curing house or charcuterie: what is the difference?

Charcuterie is the broad category. It brings together all products made from meat, cooked as well as raw, from rillettes to cooked ham.

Cured products are a specific family within it: those preserved by salt, then dried and cured, and eaten without cooking. A dry saucisson, a Spanish ham or a fuet are cured products. A pâté or a sausage meant for cooking are not, even though they come out of the same workshop.

The process: salting, drying, curing

Three stages, always in this order.

Salting. The meat is brought into contact with salt, either dry salt or brine. Salt goes in as water comes out, and it is this loss of water that makes the environment inhospitable to bacteria.

Drying. The piece loses more water, slowly, in a ventilated room. The more it dries, the firmer its flesh becomes and the more concentrated its taste. This is the stage detailed in our article on the desiccation of saucisson.

Curing. Time does the rest: the aromas develop and the texture sets. This is where the gap widens between a ham cured for twelve months and one cured for thirty-six.

Which meats and which cured products?

Pork dominates, because its flesh and its fat lend themselves to long drying. The cut chosen determines the product: the leg gives the ham, the shoulder and the loin go for mincing into saucisson, the loin gives the lomo.

Other meats lend themselves to it too: beef, duck, turkey, wild boar. They give leaner cured meats, which are sliced thin.

Our range covers the essentials of this family: saucissons, Catalan fuets, Spanish hams, cured meats for slicing and sobrasadas.

Artisan curing houses and industrial ones

The difference lies in time and batch size. An artisan curing house works in small batches and lets the meat dry for a long time; industrial production shortens the cycle and standardises the result. Salt, for its part, does the same job in both cases.

How long does a cured product keep?

That is the whole point of the process: a long time. The exact duration depends on the product and on how it is kept, a subject we cover in our guide on storing dry saucisson.

Are you a professional? Bar, restaurant, brasserie, wine cellar,...

Would you like to resell our charcuterie?