About Marek
📍 Cleveland, OH
Marek Kowalski grew up watching his grandfather cure meat every winter — kielbasa, bacon, whatever the pig gave them that year. He picked the tradition back up in his thirties, built his first curing chamber from a secondhand wine fridge, and has spent years running batches since — failures included. He compiles The Curing Cellar's recommendations from equipment specs, curing science fundamentals, and the consensus of long-term home curers.
I'm Marek. My grandfather cured meat in the basement of his house every winter — kielbasa, bacon, whatever the pig gave us that year — and it wasn't a hobby to him, it was just how you kept a family fed through the cold months. I didn't take it seriously myself until my thirties, when I built my first curing chamber out of a secondhand wine fridge and ruined more batches than I'll admit to. Years and a proper humidity-controlled setup later, curing is the thing I actually spend my weekends on. I'm in my early forties, based in Cleveland — which, if you know anything about Northeast Ohio's Eastern European history, is not a bad place to be if you're trying to learn to cure kielbasa.
How I pick: I don't run a professional testing lab, and I'm not a food scientist. What I have is a lot of batches behind me — failed ones, salvaged ones, ones that came out right — plus a habit of reading everything I can find on curing salts, culture strains, and equipment before I buy. Recommendations here come from comparing specs and reviews against what I've actually needed in my own setup, and from paying close attention to what other long-term home curers report, especially the failure patterns.
What I won't do: no claiming lab-tested results I haven't run. No treating every product as if I've personally used it — I haven't, and I'll say when a pick is based on research and owner consensus rather than my own kitchen. No pretending curing meat at home is risk-free — where food safety actually matters (curing salts, nitrite ratios, chamber temperatures), I point to the real guidance, not my own guesswork.