Friday, May 25, 2012

Bippity Boppity BACON

To start off, I will show you an amazing piece of discussion regarding bacon.  It's everything I believe on the subject:



Heh.  Of course, you know I ripped the title of the post straight from the video.  Now, on to the meat of the matter.  The curing is complete and...

Table for Yum, please
So far, so good.  The color is right.  So, after taking it out of the fridge, I thoroughly rinsed and then soaked each slab in cold water for 30 minutes.  After draining and drying with paper towels, we're ready to do some testing.  At this point I was a bit concerned that maybe I let it cure for a bit long and it might be too salty.  Turns out that was all just nonsense.

Oh, yes!  Yes!  Yes!
Top left - chipotle; top right - brown sugar; bottom - black pepper.

Also, this is where I give HUGE kudos to Old NFO for mentioning black pepper curing.  This was oh so fantastic and was my favorite.  It had a wonderful black pepper flavor throughout the whole piece of bacon.  Mrs. 45er preferred the brown sugar cure.  It had a nice sweet/salty flavor going on.  The chipotle was very nice, but I'm afraid I didn't give it much of a chance.  It had a nice cure and wasn't overpowering in flavor, but had just a nice hint of heat in the back of the throat.  Unfortunately, I used the worst cut of meat for that cure since I thought it might not be that great.  Turns out it was just fine.  Oh well, we'll have more soon.

Results?  Well, after the few test batches...  need more BACON.


So I slice a bunch more of the black pepper cured stuff and filled up the pan.  I was discovering now that this stuff is rather lean and you don't get much fat in the pan.  I started with a touch of olive oil in the pan until some of the fat rendered out.  Normally, I would add bacon fat to start things off but I didn't want to alter the flavor with commercial bacon fat.  Also, it was hard to cut it real thin but I did ok.  I started the heat medium low until the meat was close to cooked and rendered some fat, then cranked it up just over medium to put the crisp on it.

Cue angels singing
Just some observations:  What we have come to know as "bacon" has its own distinct flavor and smell.  It is  truly a great thing, but the commercial bacon has a different smell and flavor.  It's a funny thing, what you become used to becomes your point of reference.  It's like eating canned green beans all of your life, then trying fresh ones.  You may not think you like it, but not because it isn't better only because you aren't used to it.  This is kind of like that.  However, I don't know how you couldn't think this was good in a different way.  We loved it.

So now the meat is ready for some smoke.  I cut the slab of pepper cure in half to keep some normal and smoke some.  Same with the brown sugar.  We will see how that turns out after tomorrow.  I'm so happy with the results, I can't wait to do some more curing.  Next up, cured back loin (peameal bacon).

14 comments:

  1. Chill/semi-freeze it before you slice it for thin slices, which of course, is a blasphemy. Enjoy anyway.

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    1. mike, I'm not a fan of paper thin bacon. I realize my definition of thin isn't what you get in the store. The issue I was having with this was inconsistent size and ending up with pieces that were a bit too big. Part of that, I realized is I just started cutting from the end instead of cutting off the end and creating a flat edge. I think the semi-freeze will help along with an electric knife to slice some nice, uniform pieces.

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  2. i knew better than to click on the link to your blog - i knew better! but i couldn't help myself! i would love all of the bacon but i am sure that my fave would be the brown sugar cure. ugh. now i want proper bacon. i haven't had proper bacon in years. can you send me your address and directions to your house? i'll be riding down on the ATV - have to leave the truck for jambaloney - it'll only take me a few days to get there. can you save some of that bacon for me?

    oh i knew better than to click the link. i just knew better.

    your friend,
    kymber

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    1. Yes, kymber, bacon is impossible to resist even when you know you shouldn't. :) I'll be expecting you on the ATV any day now. I regret not doing more of the brown sugar, but we have bunches more to try and it will just get better with practice.

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  3. Damn, now MY mouth is watering :-) Glad you like the peppered version! :-)

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    1. You know, NFO, I was just surprised how much of the black pepper flavor the meat took on. I've had "peppered" bacon from the store, but that is pretty much just coated. This stuff actually tastes like pepper. Very nice. Thanks.

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  4. Replies
    1. Rich, it really is. Thing is, it doesn't taste like the stuff you get in the store. The smell when it is cooking isn't your typical bacon smell, either. I can't wait to put some smoke on it and see what that does.

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  5. Hate.

    You.

    Get the smoker fired up!

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    1. Oh, That Guy, good news is that it's happening this weekend. Bad news is not today. I was going to use a smoker I use for BBQ, but that just isn't going to work. Going to have to use the big one we use for sausage so I can hang it inside and keep the temp down. Also, we're looking around for smokers like yours so I can really control temp and not have to "engineer" things. Also, there is a total of 10 pounds of bacon so there will be some coming up with me next weekend. I'll probably start a loin curing this weekend as well. I'm also really interested in trying to do some cure on a wild boar if we get one this coming season.

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  6. Oh yeah, loves me some bacon. I can almost smell/taste your bacon in all its variants : ) That was a funny clip too...

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    1. I'm generally addicted to bacon. The homemade stuff is different, but I think it's better. Glad you liked the clip, Gaffigan is one of my favorites. Thanks, Craig.

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  7. Shoo...glad to hear your say your bacon didn't give much fat either. Ours didn't and we thought it was the way we cut it. I agree with your statement...it's not like store bought bacon. But I prefer the homemade stuff now. My favorite has been the peppered

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    1. LB, I've found that the best cut of the "belly" is supposed to be up toward the top of the ribs (just ventral or below the backstrap) and as you peel the meat off the ribs getting closer to the actual belly the meat gets less desirable for bacon. I used the whole cut except I didn't get the thickest part at the top. I followed instructions that showed to cut it from the midline of the body down. Next time we're taking the whole sheet. I'll give up some rib meat for bacon every day. Since we skinned and cut the whole pig, I really got to see every layer. We did lose some of the fat by peeling it off with the skin, but normal domestic pigs raised on a farm just don't have the 1 1/2 inches of fat like the ones I've seen coming from commercial and even specialty pig lots. I guess you would equate those to foie gras. They fatten those suckers up. We just fed them and didn't want to keep them long enough (and spend tons of money) for more fat.

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