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Scott Bakula posted:Does anyone have tips on how to get more flavour into the bacon from the cure? The chilli and fennel I added to my cure don't really seem to have made much difference. Is this always likely to be the way? My guess would be that the compounds or molecules from the pieces of chile/fennel you're using are too large for the belly to absorb very much. Perhaps grind them into a fine powder, and try that?
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Mar 28, 2013 15:40
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I've been inspired by this thread to dive into charcuterie. I've been smoking food for a while now with a Bradley digital smoker, so this seems like the next logical step. Homemade bacon must happen and The Book is on order from amazon as we speak. I live on the top floor of my apartment so I am limited in places to cure my meat (unless I hang it in my storage locker). I've been able to source out a wine fridge for use as a curing chamber, as well as get a Temp./Humidity sensor to stick in it. I plan on spending a bit of time dicking around with the setup to ensure I can get the proper environment inside the chamber. I'll start off using wet salt and see if that works to maintain humidity. I saw at least one person using a wine fridge for a setup, any other advice on how to set mine up? Apologies if I've missed this in the thread already: Does anyone know of a supplier for Prague Powder in Vancouver BC that isn't Stuffers Supply Company? I want to pick some up but would prefer to avoid the trip out to Langley.
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Mar 29, 2013 00:45
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sinburger posted:I've been inspired by this thread to dive into charcuterie. I've been smoking food for a while now with a Bradley digital smoker, so this seems like the next logical step. Homemade bacon must happen and The Book is on order from amazon as we speak. That was most likely me. All I have really done so far is use the tray of wet salt and check it once or twice a day and open the door if I need to if it's too humid. I would eventually like to get a fan installed into the side of the fridge to run when the humidity gets too high.
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Mar 29, 2013 02:00
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dms666 posted:That was most likely me. All I have really done so far is use the tray of wet salt and check it once or twice a day and open the door if I need to if it's too humid. I would eventually like to get a fan installed into the side of the fridge to run when the humidity gets too high. Yea, I would imagine if the wine fridge is chilled using a cooling plate than cutting a hole in the side of the fridge for airflow wouldn't hit anything vital to the functionality of the fridge. All the reviews on the model of wine fridge I'm getting state that the door is faulty and leaves a bit of a gap between the seal and the chamber. I'm hoping if that's the case it'll work in my favour by allowing a bit of air flow between the times I open the door to check on it. I'm trying to get as close as possible to the design here: http://mattikaarts.com/blog/charcuterie/meat-curing-at-home-the-setup/ ..except I don't have room for anything remotely approaching the size of a frost free fridge. I figure the worst case scenario is I wind up cutting some holes in the side of my $50 craigslist wine fridge and bolt on a computer fan attached to a hydrostat.
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Mar 29, 2013 03:46
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I've made a few batches of bacon, mainly with some variety of a savory cure. (and Ruhman's Garlic-Sage Brined Pork chop is awesome, btw) The best, so far, is the Country Bacon recipe from Belly to Bacon, even if I chickened out on the cold smoking by a large margin (24 hours, with a hot smoke finish versus 72 hours cold). Next batch will go the full 72 hours, even if I have to only smoke at night, as the bacon changed (postively) from when I pulled it off after hot smoking to a few days later. I will let you all know how a full 72 hours cold smoke does on the Country Bacon when done, but one really great thing about it is, even though I panicked and turned up the heat, there is a lot of unrendered fat when cold smoked. Just an observation, fwiw. Question: What is a good slicer that isn't over $300 or thereabouts? I still suck at slicing and can think of a couple of other uses for a slicer, so I'm in the market, but would appreciate the benefit of goon wisdom.
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Mar 29, 2013 07:43
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The goods have arrived, let the games begin! Next stop is to get some pork belly to start My First Bacon.
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Apr 2, 2013 04:48
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I decided to have a go at corned beef, buying huge chunks of meat is not that easy in the UK so doing two smaller ones so I might smoke one part of it. I'll find out if it worked in 5 days I guess.
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Apr 2, 2013 11:24
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Aramoro posted:I decided to have a go at corned beef, buying huge chunks of meat is not that easy in the UK so doing two smaller ones so I might smoke one part of it. I'll find out if it worked in 5 days I guess. I did this, so I recommend you do them in separate bags/containers. If they're together, they might touch and any parts that are touching other meat are not going to be touching brine.
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Apr 2, 2013 15:46
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Saint Darwin posted:I did this, so I recommend you do them in separate bags/containers. If they're together, they might touch and any parts that are touching other meat are not going to be touching brine. I was just going to turn them each day to make sure they had a decent amount of brining all round. The weighing them down process means it's pressed on the bottom.
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Apr 2, 2013 16:54
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Scott Bakula posted:The salt didn't overpower it, it was more that the chilli and fennel flavour just wasn't there. I used a tablespoon of fennel seeds bashed up a bit using a pestle and mortar I've got no high falutin science to back myself up but in my experience dry stuff doesn't seem to affect the flavour of the meat very much. This is based on comparisons between the flavour of bacon I made using fresh thyme and rosemary vs dried thyme and rosemary. Aramoro posted:I decided to have a go at corned beef, buying huge chunks of meat is not that easy in the UK so doing two smaller ones so I might smoke one part of it. I'll find out if it worked in 5 days I guess. What are you having trouble finding? My local butchers has always been very helpful. Lord of the Llamas fucked around with this message at 03:44 on Apr 3, 2013 |
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Apr 3, 2013 03:42
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Lord of the Llamas posted:What are you having trouble finding? My local butchers has always been very helpful. Oh going to the butcher is fine, it's just for those Sunday morning whims when I want to do something like this. Out of interest what the meat supposed to look like when it's in the brine?
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Apr 3, 2013 15:34
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Aramoro posted:Out of interest what the meat supposed to look like when it's in the brine? Brown/grey and unappetizing. Boiling it makes it look even worse, then you slice it up to reveal the delicious pink insides. 
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Apr 3, 2013 16:11
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Armed Neutrality posted:Brown/grey and unappetizing. Boiling it makes it look even worse, then you slice it up to reveal the delicious pink insides. How handy as mine was looking very grey when I had a look last night.
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Apr 3, 2013 16:32
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So here is the bresaola (eye of round) I made. I'm not sure why the inside has different colors. The meat lost 35% of its weight, so according to Ruhlman I would think it is safe.  I know the outside definitely hardened more than the inside, I couldn't find any large casings to put it in to help even out the drying during the month long hang in the chamber. It tastes great, had primarily a cinnamon/clove cure, strong beef taste. Oh, and the color isn't from pink salt. dms666 fucked around with this message at 00:28 on Apr 5, 2013 |
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Apr 4, 2013 23:59
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Scott Bakula posted:The salt didn't overpower it, it was more that the chilli and fennel flavour just wasn't there. I used a tablespoon of fennel seeds bashed up a bit using a pestle and mortar  PLAYING WITH FIRE ADVICE A longer cure time with less salt is probably the only way to go. Also, grinding your spices smaller will help them 'get into the meat' a little easier. The thing you are fighting here is that salt readily dissolves into molecular scale and quickly penetrates the meat via osmosis. Spices do not. They just break into really tiny chunks after a while in the brine and attempt to barge their way in. If you reduce the amount of salt, but give it a longer cure time, you may be able to stave off over-salting your meat by allowing its saline content to come to equilibrium slower and simply giving the smaller-ground spices a chance to penetrate further. But remember, there are a lot of other variables at work that may cause this to not work. E.g. not curing fast enough to stave off bacteria growth. Another idea that would definitely take a gentle hand would be to inject small amounts of highly spiced brine directly into the meat in a ton of teeny-tiny doses. The saline content of that would be the same as the brine outside, so it wouldn't over-salt, but this would ensure that some of the spice would have nowhere to run. But, you'd have to make sure you did a literal poo poo-tonne of miniature injections. Like every square centimeter. Any less frequent with bigger injections would just lead to an uneven, potentially flavor-bombed piece of meat.
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Apr 5, 2013 20:39
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So I took my first bit of corned beef (following the Rhulman recipe) out and boiled it up and it was super tasty. The only thing was it was only pink to about half an inch into the meat. It all tasted fine but it was as if the nitrates had not penetrated deep enough (or perhaps any of the cure). What went wrong?
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Apr 6, 2013 21:27
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Aramoro posted:So I took my first bit of corned beef (following the Rhulman recipe) out and boiled it up and it was super tasty. The only thing was it was only pink to about half an inch into the meat. It all tasted fine but it was as if the nitrates had not penetrated deep enough (or perhaps any of the cure). What went wrong? How long did you leave it in the brine? I did a thick brisket for six days, and it was pink all the way through except for this grey sliver that ran through the center. I was thinking an extra day or two would have done the job.
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Apr 6, 2013 22:10
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Same thing happened to me with the Ruhlman corned beef. Needs more time in the brine I think.
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Apr 6, 2013 22:36
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Timo posted:How long did you leave it in the brine? I did a thick brisket for six days, and it was pink all the way through except for this grey sliver that ran through the center. I was thinking an extra day or two would have done the job. I did 2 bits, both in for 5 days I think the first bit which I boiled was quite a dense bit of meat. The second one I did sous vide style for 15 hours and it came out perfectly pink all the way though, it had a bit of a looser texture when raw though.
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Apr 7, 2013 09:32
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Since you're in the UK, what did your brisket look like when you bought it? What I see as brisket looks really different to the US cut. Assuming you used brisket anyway
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Apr 7, 2013 17:47
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Scott Bakula posted:Since you're in the UK, what did your brisket look like when you bought it? What I see as brisket looks really different to the US cut. Assuming you used brisket anyway It looked pretty much exactly like this, except I cut the strings to let it unroll.  I got 2 pieces from the butcher counter, first bit was really solid and very fresh the second had a bit more age to it, loosened up a bit. First one made better sandwiches, second one made better hash.
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Apr 8, 2013 09:38
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My Charcuting carrier starts today with a basic Bacon. I picked up a 1.7Kg pork belly from the local butcher. Organically raised heritage breed from a local farm, I expect nothing less from Vancouver Island.  I am using the Basic Dry Cure from Ruhlman scaled down to my single piece. Dry Cure 24g - Kosher Salt 22g - Dextrose 4g - Curing Salt Rub that critter down real good like.  Now put it snugly to bed in a zip lock bag.  Now to play the waiting game...
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Apr 14, 2013 00:15
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What are you guys paying for pork side/belly? I just called the only butcher in my city that has it. It comes frozen, in 8lb hunks, and at $4.19 a lb. That seems god drat ridiculous to me, as I can get fresh 'good' cuts for less than half that. edit: should say "only one that I've found that has it", I haven't checked the mexican markets yet, and the other meat places seem mostly to cater to larger operations. I see that there. fucked around with this message at 19:40 on Apr 15, 2013 |
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Apr 15, 2013 19:37
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If you can't find belly use pork loin and make back bacon. People say that belly tastes better because of the fat but I find that the cure is way more important and they both taste the same. Belly is better if you're going to render out the fat to fry the rest of a meal in but most loin I buy tends to have a good hunk of fat on the top that you can fry first. It'll probably be more expensive but it goes on sale fairly regularly where I am in England and it still works out about the same price as normal bacon when its not on sale.
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Apr 15, 2013 22:50
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Mexican market is the way to go. La Michoacana has it for ~2.19/lb, and I've seen it as low as 1.69 on sale. Also, backbacon is good. I should probably do one while whole loin is 1.99/lb this week.
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Apr 16, 2013 04:09
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Forgot to post this back when I took it down in February, but this is how my pepper-cardamom lonza turned out. The other side isn't as red and almost seemed kinda raw. I ate it anyway and suffered no ill effects, but I probably should have cured it longer. I think the big problem was that I left the bone in the loin, which must have kept the meat moist longer. Next time I'll take it out. Definitely something to try again though. This is what I was doing with it when I wasn't chopping it into chunks to throw into polenta. 
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Apr 16, 2013 13:27
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In WNY I've seen bellies cost about $2.5-3 a pound for frozen with skin on at public markets. Its also available at about one meat market (Palmers) in my area for $4 a pound with out skin. The asian food market that I went to had them for about $3, maybe less but they were significantly worse looking cuts and much smaller, in the range of about 1-2 pounds.
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Apr 16, 2013 14:51
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That just seems so high to me. I can get whole pork loins for like $1.19 when they go on sale. For a cut they don't even normally offer in the store, you'd think they'd have a better price on them. I guess there's more supply of loins at that level of consumerism though I suppose.
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Apr 16, 2013 16:16
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That's just it. It's a cut of pork that your average consumer doesn't normally buy. They take up a lot of room on the shelf or in the cooler too. I think the last time I looked at oscar myer bacon it was about $6-$7 a pound so buying our own is still cheaper and significantly better tasting than store bought. Making bacon, similar to making beer isn't about saving money, it's about creating something that is unique and delicious.
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Apr 16, 2013 18:31
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Just took my pancetta down. Hung in the closet for roughly 5 weeks. I stopped weighing them a few batches ago, but I would wager this is roughly 30% weight loss. I also found that draping a damp paper towel over the meat daily for the first week or two really evens out the drying process. No outer case hardening at all this time around. (except described below) A little meatier than normal, but if that's the worst thing to happen to me this week, I'll be happy. Time for some carbonara! I get mine here in Chicago from Peoria Packing usually for about $1.79/lb for the thing; fresh and skin on. They've got every part of a cow/pig/chicken/turkey/fish that you could ever want. And most of the other parts that you wouldn't want. And its all dirt cheap. The place is phenomenal if you know what you're doing. A question for anyone else with experience with pancetta rolls: Has anyone had any good ideas/methods/techniques to reduce the amount of loss on the butt ends of the roll? I always lose about 1" on both ends because they turn rock hard. I might try painting on some food-grade wax next time so that the roll can't dry axially, but I have no idea how that'll turn out.
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Apr 17, 2013 17:36
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femcastra posted:Bacon!!!!! Hey, I missed this the first time around. How'd you slice that? I'm in Japan as well and I really don't want to give up space for a slicer. I figured I'd go ask a butcher if they'd slice it for me, but I'd like to hear how you did it.
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Apr 21, 2013 03:17
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Stringent posted:Hey, I missed this the first time around. How'd you slice that? Honestly I just used a big sharp knife to slice all that up. I got a pretty good knife set off amazon and picked up a knife sharpener at the same time. Before I sliced this batch up, I gave the biggest knife in the block a good sharpening and then had at it. Here's links to the knife set and sharpener on amazon: http://tinyurl.com/cd3qpyv http://tinyurl.com/d48tt3p Incidentally, my in-laws were in town recently and spent some time visiting us in our apartment. My father in law spent some time sharpening up our knives with the knife sharpener (he's an ex-butcher, that's what he does when he visits family) and he said the knife sharpener was "pretty drat good", so there's one testimonial for you. Good luck! Home-made bacon is the best. Where in Japan are you? I can probably spare some curing salts if you need some and you're in the Tokyo area. femcastra fucked around with this message at 13:16 on Apr 24, 2013 |
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Apr 22, 2013 11:14
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I've got a brisket to make pastrami with and was wondering how long I should leave it in the brine? Ruhlman only recommends 2-3 days but that seems a bit short. I'm only going to have the time to cook it at a weekend so would it be a mistake to brine it for a week and brine it on saturday or is that a mistake and I should brine it tonight to smoke it for sunday?
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Apr 24, 2013 18:34
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I just bought a Kenwood major with the sausage tool. Do you think I can do some sausages with this ? I want to make some dry ones. I can leave them some time in my cellar .Do you have some good recipes for it ?
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Apr 24, 2013 19:53
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So I have begun curing salmon and noticed in a post on page 1 or 2 Slung Blade doing what appears to be curing it in a jar. Has anyone else had success salt curing in this way? I was under the impression you wanted a tight wrap of some kind on it to cure the meat. It would be much easier for me to use this huge swing-top jar to cure in if that is possible.
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Apr 25, 2013 02:28
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Saucisson Sec with hazelnuts (bottom) and a spicy salami (top). Time to hang em up and be back in a month, eh!
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Apr 25, 2013 02:39
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Bacon round 1 is out of cure and partially sliced. Ruhlmann's base cure, plus black pepper and a little bit of oregano. The general consensus is "yup that's some tasty bacon."
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Apr 26, 2013 13:00
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I'll be cold smoking then cooking my first batch of bacon today. I bought 2.2 kg (4.8 lbs) of pork belly from the local butcher (3Ps in North Vancouver for any lower mainland goons) and put them into a basic cure + chili powder, pepper and ground cumin on the 14th. No liquid has seeped out of the meat after the first week of curing, and the bacon didn't seem to be getting as firm as I would've liked it, so after a week I put another 25 g of cure into the mix and let it sit for another 5 days. I had a bit of liquid come out and the meat seemed to have firmed up a bit so hopefully I have a decent distribution of cure through the meat. I pulled it out of the fridge this morning to rinse it off and I'm letting it surface dry in the fridge right now to try and get a bit of a pelicle to form before putting it in the smoker. The plan is to cold smoke for about 3 hours, let it sit, then hot smoke at temperature until it is cooked. I'll post pictures this afternoon as it happen sinburger fucked around with this message at 04:59 on Apr 29, 2013 |
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Apr 28, 2013 16:48
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Alright, so after a busy day of sitting on my deck watching the smoker run I've decided that store bought bacon is for the birds. Here's the two slabs of belly after the cure and a bit of drying in the fridge:  They were cured with some chili powder in the dry cure which gave them the redness on the outside. By the time they went in the smoker they were a bit tacky to the touch. Slapped onto the hooks...:  ...and loaded into the smoke box:  Three hours of cold smoke later"  And then 2.5 hours at 200°F with the smoke running:  Direct into the pan:  And then plated and served for mastication with friends:  My better half also fried up the skins in strips with the bacon fat and we crunched on that. It was so good, like a slutty potato chip that wanted to give up the flavor but you had to soften her up a bit (with chewing!) first. All in all, first pass at bacon was a great success.
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Apr 29, 2013 05:11
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| # ? May 29, 2024 19:50 |
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Well, my first ever attempt at bacon is curing now. 1.4kg of belly, Ruhlman's basic cure with black pepper and chilli flakes. I'd like to turn half of it into bacon and the rest into pancetta. Does pancetta give off a smell whilst it's hanging? That might be a problem, since it'll hang above my desk.
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May 2, 2013 00:13
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