Just looking for a safety/sanity check here regarding making biltong from cold smoked bacon.
I would like to make bacon biltong using a recipe similar to this one:
1 kilogram Back bacon
4 tablespoons salt
1 tablespoon ground black pepper
1 tablespoon chilli spice
125 millilitres white vinegar
How to make it
1. Place a layer of bacon in a glass dish.
2. Sprinkle with dry spice mix.
3. place next layer of bacon.
4. Spice and repeat till all bacon spiced.
5. sprinkle over vinegar.
6. cover with plastic wrap and rest for 4 hours.
7. Hang to dry, approx 2 days.
I make my own bacon (dry cure, EQC method with the cure + salt measured out to the nearest 0.01g using the calculator at http://www.diggingdogfarm.com/page2.html).
Recently I have moved from hot smoking to cold smoking and am concerned about the safety of making biltong from cold smoked bacon.
I understand the cure and salt kill off most/all micro-organisms, and a dry cure should in theory leave it fairly safe. Is this a reasonable assumption or am I being foolish? Would it be significantly safer to use hot smoked bacon or is there really no practical difference after 10 days of curing + smoking?
(Typically I would do 2 x 8 smoking sessions - the temperature is fairly well maintained/monitored through-out)