Have we just ruined our prosciutto and brined ham in the first 14 hours?

My wife and I just got our pig back from the butcher, she made a cider brine from a river cottage book we have. We left the brine on the kitchen side overnight to cool. Our kitchen is a steady 20c. In the morning we cut up both hams, most of which was soaked in the brine and a 1.3kg chunk was put into a salt box. I hadn't read about the curing techniques, my wife read the books whilst I was dealing with the sausages. She said that we could leave the brine soaked meat and the salt box on the side in the kitchen. I woke up in the middle of the night about 14 hours after putting the meat into brine and salt box. I started thinking about this temperature, so I started to read the books and both the recipes say to keep the meat in a cool area whilst salting/brining. I wouldn't say 20c is cool and the brine would have been 20c when we started. My wife is always complaining about the house being to cold, we have very different ideas about a comfortable room temperature.

Have we ruined our meat before we have even started?

Thanks

That sounds painful! I hope you've found some good, reassuring info that you haven't lost all that good meat!

I'd wait and see.
It should be fine as it would have been chilled when you got it.
It's over 20c here at the moment and I'll still leave meat/animals hanging in muslin for 2 nights in the shade after killing.

I think you probably got them fast enough, set them outside now, it's a much better temperature out there (if you are in the UK as it sounds) 20C is certainly not what he means by "cool" I've not re-read to check but I seem to remember he means 10C and under.

Skandi Rogers wrote:I think you probably got them fast enough, set them outside now, it's a much better temperature out there (if you are in the UK as it sounds) 20C is certainly not what he means by "cool" I've not re-read to check but I seem to remember he means 10C and under.

But make sure any animals don't get to it before you do :0

If this was something that you did all the time and your air, surface and even water was 'contaminated/innoculated' with the good/fermenting microbes I would say you have absolutely nothing to worry about, let it ferment for another couple months then eat it. But I dont know what your existing microbial biome looks like. That said if you were just 'marinating' in the kitchen overnight at 20C and then cooking it immediately, I would say eat it as long as it smells good. I like a good koji/amazake + kefir innoculant/starter to most brines/ferment.