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This thread has inspiredme to buy 8 pounds of delicious pork belly and get started making bacon. I managed to get my hands on Prague Powder a couple of days ino what was originally supposed to be nitrate-free bacon, but added it anyways. Should i let it cure for longer than a week, or should a week be fine. I've also made quite a lot of rillettes, which is dead easy and really delicious. I can post a recipe and some pictures if it's not outside the scope if this thread.
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Nov 8, 2011 12:48
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beefnchedda posted:Does anyone have any experience with making rillettes? Pork rilettes are ridiculously tasty, and really easy to make. I've made them a couple of times, with rather good result. I use pork belly, the fattier the better, and i usually cut away some of the lean meat as well. You want loads of fat. More fat than you think you'll need. I cannot stress this enough. About 40/60 fat/meat is good. However, the stringy gristle-y fat on the inside of the belly is best cut away, as it doesnt render properly. Pork but also works well, but then you need to add extra fat from somewhere else.  Lovely pork fat. Food of the gods. Cube the meat, season with salt and white pepper, pack it tightly in a pot, and add enough water to almost but not quite cover. Then the pot is left in the stove on low heat for hours. The water will help render the fat and then evaporate, so after a few hours you should have bits of pork simmering away in their own fat. Don't be alarmed if its looks like some kind of overboiled pork tragedy at the one-hour mark; this is normal. As soon as the fat renders, things will improve. Exactly how long this takes depends on your meat, the amount of fat and how small you've cut it. Leave the pork to simmer in the fat until the meat is tender enough to be torn to shreds with a fork, and strain off the fat into a different pot. Ladle some of the fat back into the meat, making sure not to get any of the water. Crank the heat up on the remaining fat to evaporate whatever water is left, and mash the meat with a fork until you get a coarse mush. At this point i also do the final seasoning. You want the meat at this stage to be a little bit saltier than you want the final product, as the flavours will be muted when its served cold. Pack the mashed pork into jars, and cover with enough fat to leave a generous cap on top of the meat. This will help it keep. Make sure to get rid of any air bubbles. Make a better job of it than i did   If you make this, make loads. It takes very little active effort, and it takes quite a lot of meat to make one jar, so you might as well make a big batch.  Serve on some kind of toasted bread. Capers, conrichions and/or finely sliced shallots are nice, but it holds up well on its own. Make sure to get a good piece of the fat cap, and smush it into the meat as you spread it. snailassault fucked around with this message at 13:13 on Nov 12, 2011 |
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Nov 12, 2011 11:46
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Errant Gin Monks posted:Oh poo poo rillettes... I totally just turned 3 lbs of pork belly into rillettes. Can't wait for them to finish melding into awesomeness and eat them next weekend. I admire your self control. I never manage to wait any more than a day. Also: I made some bacon with the recipe in the start of the thread, and it turned out beautiful! So now there's 8 more pounds of pork curing away happily in my fridge. Now to jury rig some kind of bacon smoking setup...
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Nov 13, 2011 20:42
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Bacon question: what is the purpose of heating the bacon after its done curing? I made a batch of bacon last week, and were planning to cook them yesterday. I fried up a little slice of the bacon to check for saltiness, and what i had pretty much looked like and tasted like bacon. The last batch i made got heated up, and whilst nice, had more of a cooked flavour. I used a thermometer, and pulled it out a few degrees short becaus I was impatient. The un-heated bacon also looks and feels a lot more like the bacon I get in stores (Norway). I really prefer the "raw" product - am I doing something wrong, or is american bacon just different from the stuff I'm used to?
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Nov 21, 2011 02:43
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Errant Gin Monks posted:Cooking the bacon to 150 will kill anything left from curing and extend it's shelf life. It's like the drying process for sausage an pancetta but uses heat instead. Using smoke also imparts additional flavor. Cool. Most of it's frozen now, so I probably wont die.
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Nov 21, 2011 09:21
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