So, as I had noted in a previous post, my good friend Don C had roused my interest in making some bacon. Everyone loves bacon; in fact, even some vegetarians I have known have never quite been able to get over the stuff.
Now, for me, the coolest cooking school experience is garde manger work. No matter what you end up doing after school, in garde manger class, you will learn amazing stuff, such as charcuterie, which is how to make sausages, gallantines, patés, and best of all, bacon (like all charcuterie products, it is a brilliant microcosm of kitchen virtues; it involves full utilization, technique, and transformation).
Bacon is made with pork belly, a fairly cheap piece of meat. Belly braises well, but it is unremarkable compared its full expression, achieved when one adds the proper amount of salt, curing salt (salt and sodium nitrate in a 93.75% : 6.25% ratio), sugar, flavoring ingredients, and about 7 – 10 days worth of time (optionally, cold smoke).
For this batch of bacon, I tested a Michael Ruhlman recipe from his Charcuterie cookbook
1) Add enough dry cure, say 50g, to dredge and cover the pork belly (skin on) in a ziplock bag. His dry cure is kosher salt/sugar/pink salt mixture in a 450g : 225g : 50g ratio.
2) To that, add your flavorings. I wanted a maple bacon, so I added 125ml of maple syrup (a nice, locally-produced syrup from Maple Grove Farms in Lebanon, Ohio).
3) After ensuring that your cure covers your pork belly, seal the zip lock bag carefully and label it well. You’ll need to overhaul (redistributing the cure) by moving the belly and the brine at least daily. I make my overhaul schedule part of my labeling on the bag. When I overhaul the belly, I strike out that day with a Sharpie. I never have to wonder if I forgot to overhaul the product.
I’ll tell you upfront that there are no pictures of the finished product. On the seventh day, I pulled the maple bacon out of the refrigerator and I saw that it was good: firm to the touch, meat nice and rosy. And I was pleased. So pleased, that after washing the bacon off and drying it carefully, any thought of getting the camera and completing the documentary evidence of the product went right out the window.
I cut the bacon into lardons (like bâtonnets, but not as long) and then fried them in a pan. They browned beautifully, and were nicely salty and sweet at the same time. They made for a great pantry item. We went through them quickly.
I didn’t smoke this bacon as I don’t have a cold smoker (I have a really kickass Brinkmann for hot smoking). Cold smoking (below 100ºF) acts only to flavor the product and not cook it. I might have been able to rig something up to do a cold smoke, but I thought this bacon worked really well with just the maple cure on it.
By the way, I can’t say enough about Ruhlman’s Charcuterie