Monday, July 26, 2010

Bacon Time

Recently I set out on the quest to make Bacon. However because my grill was stolen a few weeks ago, I created Pancetta instead. It seems like everyone and their mother is making Pancetta these days. For those who are unaware, Pancetta is very much like bacon, only it is dried instead of smoked.

Started with two lbs of raw skinless porkbelly. (Sorry, due to technical difficulties, I had problems with the first couple of pictures)

A mixture of :
Garlic
Sage
Rosemary
Thyme
Bay Leaf
Red Pepper
Corriander
1lb of Kosher Salt
1 cup of sugar
10 Teaspoons of Pink Salt.

For those of you who don't know, Pink salt is a special blend of regular salt, and Sodium Nitrite.

This mixture was spread all over the pork bellies, and placed in a zip lock bag in the refridgerator for a week.



After a week a huge amount of liquid was left in the bag. I just disposed of it, and rinsed the meat.


Then I cut a hole in each piece and let it dry for another week. It was hot out, and the optimum temperature is around 70 degrees with 50% humidity. The air conditioner had to run overtime to keep that up.



The meat was all crusty and didn't look appetizing at all. However the first cut revealed a thing of beauty.


Now the meat is still raw, so it still needs to be cooked. But holy cow is it delicious, very salty. Carbonara is in the future.

1 comment:

  1. wow! good thing your roommates are gone.

    ReplyDelete