Salt-curing with spices
Also called curing, dry curing, gravlax cure
Quick answer
Burying fish or meat in salt, often with sugar and spices, for hours to weeks so that the salt draws out water and the spices season it as it firms.
What it does to spices
In a cure the salt does the work of preservation and the spices ride with it. Over the long contact time, aroma compounds from the spices move into the surface of the fish or meat, which is why the spices of a cure are few, bold and chosen to survive salt: dill and dill seed for gravlax, pepper, coriander and juniper for charcuterie and pastrami, Espelette chilli for Bayonne ham. Whole or coarsely cracked spices are preferred, since fine powder clumps in the brine drawn out of the food and seasons unevenly.
Why it works
Salt at high concentration draws water out of the tissue by osmosis and dissolves into it, lowering the water available to microbes and firming the flesh. Sugar moderates the saltiness and also draws water. Spice aroma diffuses inward far more slowly than salt, so it concentrates at the surface — the reason a cured salmon’s dill is strongest at the edge.
How it goes wrong
- Using powdered spices, which form a paste with the drawn-out liquid and season patchily.
- Assuming the spices contribute to preservation: at culinary quantities that is the salt’s job.
Spices it matters for
- Dill — Gravlax, with salt and sugar.
- Dill seed
- Juniper
- Black pepper
- Coriander seed — In pastrami and some charcuterie cures.
- Piment d'Espelette — In the cure for Bayonne ham.
What it is called
The same technique in the traditions that use it, each named in its own terms.
Gravlax, gravad lax
Scandinavian
Salmon cured with salt, sugar and dill.
Where it is used
The pairings that specifically call for this technique.
- Dill seed with salmon — Scandinavian curing practice puts dill and salmon together and the seed does a different job from the herb: the herb is a fresh top note added at the end, while the seed goes into the cure or the poaching liquid, where carvone moves into the fish and gives a warmth that survives the salt. Oily fish needs something sharp against it and dill seed supplies that without acidity.
- Piment d'Espelette with pork — Espelette goes into the cure for Bayonne ham, which is the largest single use of the appellation and ties the chilli to the region’s other protected product. Pork fat carries the fruitiness well, and the mild heat cuts richness without competing with the cure.
- Dill with salmon — Gravlax is the argument: salmon buried in salt, sugar and a great deal of dill for two days. Oily fish carries fat-soluble aromatics well and needs something to cut its richness, and dill’s grassy coolness does that without the anise character fennel would bring.
- Biltong spice with beef — Biltong is above all dried beef seasoned with salt, coriander and black pepper before it is hung.
- Biltong spice with venison — Game is regularly made into biltong with the same seasoning, its lean meat suiting the lean product.
Questions this page answers
- spices for curing fish and meat
- dill for gravlax
- spices in a dry cure