Who doesn't love bacon? Even vegans probably love bacon, they just don't eat it. The rest of us are obligated to take up the slack for them. I have always wanted to try to make cured meats but I have to admit, the process seems intimidating. Not only do you run the risk of poisoning yourself and your guests with botulism, you must endure long waiting periods for curing, you have to figure out the process of stuffing sausage casings, and you have to find the odd ingredients that are sometimes hard to come by and frankly, don't sound all that great if you think about them too long (like pork liver, which is used in many of the french sausage recipes I want to try).
I was going through my weekly ritual of checking out foodie blogs and websites and when I came across a site called Lavierustic.com, a commercial website which sells products devoted to "sustainable living in the French style". They offered two kits for sale - one to make pancetta, and the other to make prosciutto. The kits had cute wood boxes and nice muslin bags of salt tied with twine. It all looked so pretty and easy, I was tempted to pull out the credit card and order one. In my typical obsessive way, I then began surfing for recipes and processes for making prosciutto and pancetta, and decided you don't really need a kit. What's more, the pancetta search kept turning up links for making bacon, which seemed even easier than making pancetta, and all the pictures were so mouth-watering! So here we are - that website was the inspiration for our latest project, DIY Bacon and Pancetta. The following narrative is a tutorial which we will discuss as we work through the recipes.
Bacon vs. Pancetta - What's the difference?
In many recipes you can use bacon in place of pancetta, but there are differences between the two. While both are generally made from pork belly, there are distinctions in both process and flavor. Bacon is wet or dry brined for up to a week and then is finished by smoking until it reaches an internal temperature of 150 degrees. It must be cooked before eating. Pancetta is brined for a couple of days and is then hung to dry in a cool place unrefrigerated for 3 to 4 weeks. The type of curing salt and process you use will determine whether you can eat it as is once the cure period is over, or whether you must cook it first. Additionally, pancetta can be made in two styles - rolled, which is more traditional, or flat slab, which is the Florentine method. Both methods produce a similar taste.
We will be making Maple-Espresso Applewood Smoked Bacon, and Pancetta Arrotolata, which means "rolled pancetta" using a curing process which requires that the finished pancetta be cooked before consumption.
About our ingredients:
When selecting the ingredients for our foray, I remembered a sad day I once spent collecting blackberries. After hours of picking, covered in scratches from the thorns, I took my large bucket of berries home and baked my very first pie. I think I was 18 at the time. Bob had the first slice, and he congratulated me on the effort: "Yum! It tastes just like store-bought!" He meant it as a complement. I was crushed. I can't remember what happened to the rest of that pie. It is possible Bob found it smeared all over his face. If you are going to go to all the trouble to make something from scratch, you hope it will be decidedly better than store bought. I guarantee you this bacon will definitely be better, for several reasons. First, we will be using significantly higher quality ingredients than your average store-bought bacon. Our meat is Heritage Duroc pork from the same producer used by the CIA's Greystone Restaurant. The pork is pasture-raised which both improves the health of the pig, resulting in the need for less or no antibiotics, and also improves the flavor due to the grasses and other food sources the animal forages to supplement the feed provided by the farmer. For more information on heritage pork, I liked this link: http://www.blackberryfarm.com/pdfs/HERITAGE_BOOKLET.pdf.
In addition to the meat, we will be seasoning the bacon with pure Grade A maple syrup, and both the bacon and pancetta will be coated with black tellicherry peppercorns which were coarse ground this week - I picked them up from Oaktown Spice Shop (http://oaktownspiceshop.com) in Oakland after grazing through the Lake Merritt Farmer's Market this morning. I could have ground my own for even more freshness but I was too lazy and they were right there at the spice shop, perfectly ground to just the right degree of coarseness.
The biggest difference between our product and the store-bought version is the process we are using. As David Leite, in his blog "Leitesculinaria.com" aptly said, "Homemade bacon is as different from Oscar Mayer as Grace Kelly is from Kim Kardashian". Bravo David! Anyone who has tried thick-slice applewood smoked bacon can easily tell the difference between that and the horribly mushy, slimy, stringy strips that make up the bulk of the bacon available in the typical grocery store. Commercial bacon is typically injected with brine using hundreds of tiny needles, resulting in the texture I just described. We will be using a very thick wet brine which is hand rubbed into the nooks and crannies of the pork. We will let this seep slowly into the meat over a 7 day period, and then I will smoke it for three to four hours. If all goes well, our bacon will totally knock the socks off even the thick sliced, applewood-smoked grocery store version.
The recipes:
We will be following David's recipe for Maple - Espresso Apple-smoked bacon, which can be found here: http://leitesculinaria.com/95593/writings-homemade-bacon-cured-maple-espresso.html. I selected this recipe from the millions available because I was intrigued by the addition of espresso, which I am hoping will impart a rich layer of flavor. I have had great success adding espresso to short ribs, baked beans, and chili, and I think using it on bacon will be equally delicious.
When we prepare the bacon, we are going to adjust the proportions for the amount of pork belly we have. David's recipe is for 5-6 lbs, while we have closer to 12 lbs. One change I am making to the recipe is the amount of curing salt (Prague powder #1 or "pink salt") we'll be adding. Conventional appproaches suggest using 1 tsp to 5 lbs of meat, while David calls for 2 tsps for 5 to 6 lbs of meat. I will be reducing the pink salt to follow the conventional guidelines. Otherwise, we'd end up using 4 tsp. of pink salt for our 12 lbs of meat, and I think this is too much. The salt contains around 6% nitrites, and too much can be fatal - it acts similarly to carbon monoxide poisoning, binding with the oxygen in your blood and preventing its uptake in your tissues. It is needed to prevent botulism and it is safe when used properly. However, you must understand how to use it and be careful with it. There are many good resources on the web for learning more about using curing salt, and the differences between various types. Just remember, with curing salt, more is not necessarily better. Wikipedia has a basic primer here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curing_salt
There are a lot of recipes on the web for making bacon besides the one we will be trying. Two more you might like include http://amazingribs.com/recipes/porknography/making_bacon_from_scratch.html , and a youtube video which is really fun and can be found at www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEki-wnrVCU
The picture of the bacon on the amazing ribs site is out-of-this-world intoxicating. I can't wait to see if our bacon looks like that! Regarding the video, the narrator seems like a fun guy - he makes a great point when he compares the dangers associated with curing meat to the dangers inherent in another common product we all consume.
The bacon will take about 7 days in the fridge and part of a day in the smoker, so it will be ready fairly quickly. The pancetta, on the other hand, will need to hang dry for about 4 weeks. We will be following a recipe posted on ourdailybrine.com. The recipe can be found here: http://ourdailybrine.com/?s=pancetta+arrotolata I previewed several different recipes which were all very similar. I liked this website (maybe because it promotes sous vide cooking??) and found the recipe easy to follow, so it was the lucky winner for our project.
Other thoughts:
In researching how to make pancetta, I learned a few things. First, it is possible our pancetta will get some mold growing on the outside as it dries. This seems to be commonly reported by almost everyone who makes it. Except for some odd red and yellow strains of mold, it is not harmful. If mold develops, according to instructions provided by Michael Ruhlman, king of charcuterie, we should wipe it off with a vinegar solution as we discover it. This will prevent it from working its way into the meat. Second, the pancetta does not need to be refrigerated while it dries. This seems a little scary, but that is what the pink salt and the brining period are for. According to Ruhlman, we should select a location which receives decent air circulation, maintains a constant temperature between 50 and 70 degrees, and has a humidity level of 50-60%. Lower levels of humidity will cause the pancetta to harden, while higher levels may promote growth of mold. We have three choices of where to hang the pancetta - in my wine cellar, which is temperature and humidity controlled at 55 degrees and 70% humidity; in my pantry which will generally have temperatures ranging from 65 to 70 degrees but a lower than optimum humidity level, and in my kitchen (which is the common choice for most people) which will have a temperature of 68 to 72 degrees and a reasonable (but unknown) level of humidity. We will discuss the relative merits of each and make a choice when we meet. Finally, if at any point the pancetta starts to smell bad or look funky with lots of odd mold or other discoloration, it needs to be tossed. This would mean that our cure didn't take properly. Hopefully we won't have to face this situation.
Once the bacon and pancetta are finished, I'll divide them up between the group and deliver them to you. Both will keep in the fridge for a couple of weeks and can be frozen for several months. However, I am fairly certain we will eat them up pretty quickly, before the choice to freeze ever arises.
I'll finish this blog post with pictures and results once we have them!
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