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Meat from Spain

Lomo embuchadolomo embuchado

Lomo embuchado is a whole pork loin that is salted, seasoned with an adobo marinade, stuffed into a casing and cured. It is mainly a dry-cured meat rather than an acid ferment, though surface yeasts such as Debaryomyces hansenii grow on it. Spanish law caps its moisture at 55 % and sets at least 70 days of curing for ibérico loin.

Fully documentedMeat52 days – 3.2 months

Recipe

Lomo embuchado, a photo from Wikimedia Commons
Photo: Donpositivo, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Amounts from a sourceShares of the loin weight from a university study that salted and seasoned loins "in accordance with the common technique of Spanish producers" but used Korean spices (Choe et al. 2014).
Whole pork loinOne piece, practically free of external fat, aponeuroses and tendons[rd474-2014]
Salt2 % of loin weight[choe2014]
Seasoning (adobo)The study used 4 % Korean red pepper paste, 1 % onion, 1 % garlic and 1 % ginger powder, a Korean adaptation[choe2014]
Nitrite0.02 % of loin weightOne study's figure. It does not say whether this is pure sodium nitrite or a curing-salt mix, so it is not a home dose[choe2014]
CasingNatural casing or artificial wrapping; cattle large intestine in the study[rd474-2014][choe2014]
Starterspontaneous

Total time across the recorded steps: 52 days – 3.2 months

Start
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What changes: The whole pork loin is trimmed of fat and fascia

Step 1 of 4
Trim the loin
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
Yeasts
Flavour
Not documented
Texture
Not documented
Colour
Not documented

Microbes at work in this step

Not documented for this step.

Method

Measured measured in a studySet fixed by a specification or tested recipeReported one source reports itTypical a general value, not sourced for this fermentUnconfirmed not yet checked against a source

At a glance

Lomo embuchado is a whole pork loin that is salted, seasoned with an adobo marinade, stuffed into a casing and cured. It is mainly a dry-cured meat rather than an acid ferment, though surface yeasts such as Debaryomyces hansenii grow on it. Spanish law caps its moisture at 55 % and sets at least 70 days of curing for ibérico loin. Made in 4 steps over 52 days – 3.2 months. The longest step, cure and mature, takes 45 days – 3 months (Choe H.S 2014) and runs at 12 °C (Choe H.S 2014). Salt is 2 % (Choe H.S 2014). Debaryomyces hansenii, a yeast isolated from naturally fermented lomo embuchado; an inoculated strain grew on the surface of Iberian loin does most of the fermenting.

Key numbers
Main step45 days – 3 monthsReported[choe2014][ramosmoreno2019][rd4-2014]Cure and mature
Temperature12 °CReported[choe2014]Cure and mature
Salt2 %Reported[choe2014]Salt and season, then rest cold

What makes this one different

Lomo embuchado is a single whole muscle, salted only briefly and then cured, not a minced and fermented sausage like chorizo. Unlike ham, it gets only a short salting before drying.

Related ferments

Variants

  • Caña de lomo ibéricoFrom ibérico pigs; at least 70 days of processing under Spanish law.

Safety

Spanish quality standards cap the moisture of lomo embuchado at 55 % and require at least 70 days of processing for ibérico loin; it is eaten without cooking. This is raw pork, and CDC says curing, drying or smoking alone does not consistently kill Trichinella worms. CDC also says freezing pork less than 15 cm thick for 20 days at -15 °C kills them. Pure sodium nitrite is a white crystal that can be mistaken for salt, and swallowing it can cause methemoglobinemia, which starves the body of oxygen. Keep it labelled and do not treat the study's 0.02 % as a tested home recipe.

History and sources

Every number is labelled with how it is known. How this atlas is made

Spanish law treats "caña de lomo", "lomo embuchado" and "lomo" as regional names for the same product.

  1. [rd474-2014] Real Decreto 474/2014, de 13 de junio, por el que se aprueba la norma de calidad de derivados cárnicos, Boletín Oficial del Estado (BOE-A-2014-6435)gov
  2. [rd4-2014] Real Decreto 4/2014, de 10 de enero, por el que se aprueba la norma de calidad para la carne, el jamón, la paleta y la caña de lomo ibérico, Boletín Oficial del Estado (BOE-A-2014-318), Article 12gov
  3. [choe2014] Choe H.S., Shim K., Jung J.H., Chung Y.H., Shin D. 2014, Effects of ripening conditions on the 'Lomo embuchado' sausage quality, Korean Journal for Food Science of Animal Resources 34(3):333-338paper
  4. [ramosmoreno2019] Ramos-Moreno L., Ruiz-Castilla F.J., Bravo C., Martínez E., Menéndez M., Dios-Palomares R., Ramos J. 2019, Inoculation with a terroir selected Debaryomyces hansenii strain changes physico-chemical characteristics of Iberian cured pork loin, Meat Science 157:107875 (abstract)paper
  5. [cdc-trichinella] CDC, How to Prevent Trichinellosis (12 March 2024)gov
  6. [cdc-nitrite] CDC 2002, Methemoglobinemia following unintentional ingestion of sodium nitrite, New York, 2002, MMWR 51(29)gov