scafool--great information..thats sort of what i thought but did not know the details..i just had to give my "salt pork" a rinse in warm water to get the salt taste down to the point where i just just get a taste of it..from what you posted i can see how these guys it the old "how to camp" books could keep this stuff around and not have it go bad..thanks---
by the way we can still get salt cod in wood boxs down here-

Yum. Boxes of salt cod.
That is another thing I have not seen lately.

One of the construction camps I worked in had a Portuguese cook. Every Friday was fish day and salt cod appeared at least once a month.
It is delicious when done up right. It has a different flavour and texture than fresh cod too.

Another rare treat if you run into it is Naval beef. Naval beef is packed in barrels or pails in wet brine, very very salty.
It is soaked to reduce the salt a bit and then used in dishes like Navy bean soup. (or Jigg's dinner)

The common thing to all of these, and to the original types of bacon cures, is that they did not rely on refrigeration to preserve them.
(I don't trust modern cured meats to last without refrigeration or freezing)

Anyhow, I was asking earlier about how the freeze dried meat compares to regular dried meat. I know that pork is almost never simply dried because of the fat levels, but sometimes you can get beef that has been properly made into jerky just by drying instead of salt or sugar cured.
I have not tried freeze dried meat yet and have always suspected it to be like freezer burned meat.
Your review of it makes me wonder and I will be trying it out this summer.

I'll have to look into the Knorr Soups. I've made some of their sauces before, but haven't tried the soups.

Thanks!

The only reliable method of curing meat is the use of Sodium Nitrate/Nitrite. It has been used for thousands of years. Salt/Sugar cure or smoke cure is not reliable enough to ensure a safe finished product. That said, I have eaten more than my fair share of salt/sugar cured meat in my lifetime without any ill effects. You just have to exercise greater care in the processing.

We often shoot grouse on moose hunting trips. After years of eating our 3 local types (Ruffed, Spruce and Sharptails) I decided that I would no longer shoot the spruce grouse as the meat is very dark and to me tastes like liver (uck). My hunting partner was not part of this decision and he continues to shoot "any grouse", so spruce grouse still find there way into our cooler. To hide the strong taste my partner pan-fries the cubed meat and adds it to Knorr soup that is then allowed to simmer on the back of the wood stove in the wall tent. The liver taste is not completely gone using this method, but it is mild enough that even I enjoy this thick soup.

I still don't shoot spruce grouse because in Ontario they count in your limit with ruffed grouse and I would much rather fill my limit with them as they are delicious!

Mike

scafool--oops..went off on a tangent there and forgot the question..freeze dry V.S. just dried--the chops are the only large bit of meat i've tried that was freeze dried and i can see after some expermenting with it that you really have to soak it a long time to get it anything like a real pork chop.
i have seen instructions that say to soak it longer and then keep it in the frige overnite to really get water into all the meat cells--if thats the right term--i know when it was boiled in the soup/stew it was like any real chop i ever had..the other freeze dry stuff was by Mountain House i think .chicken and beef and the bits were so small that i really did not notice them in the Knorr rice side dishes i added them too. i did try dry meat or what passes for Jerky these days but it took forever to get soft in the stew and cutting it was another cooking chore i wanted to avoid..a local Buffalo farm has Jerky in their store but i never did like chewy meat. what i'm doing of course if putting together camp meals and not something to store away "just in case"..--salt cod in wood box's with blue printing??--Minnesota is a Swedish sort of state and you can get Old Country foods in quite a few places.
i get a dry cure,hard salami that last for weeks on the trail at a butcher shop in Minneapolis that carrys the cod along with fish in toothpaste tubes and other "treats"--

Swamp--just to keep this a "survival" post--we call Spruce Grouse "fool hens"--they will hang around your camp and can be killed with a swift whack with a stick or well aimed rock.
while i've never done that i surprized some guys who had done just that on a portage trail who took me for a Ranger because of my all tan canoeing clothes and at first were trying to hide the dead birds..when they saw i was not with the DNR they held them up like a stringer of Walleyes--

Hey CANOEDOGS,

I agree spruce grouse are "fool hens" here also and I have seen them killed with sticks and stones before. For a while at the moose camp we had a rule that you could only kill spruce grouse if you did not use a gun; this rule only confirmed that I am useless with a slingshot.

Sorry for diverting your thread about freeze-dried pork to fool-hens, you know how story telling goes, one leads to another...

Thanks for the info on the Mora 2000, I am going to pick one up next chance I get.

Later,

Mike

FYI, Yoders makes canned bacon. 12 bucks for 50 slices of bacon is pricey, but nothin beats the real thing.

Yoders Bacon