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Bacon.

Now that I have your attention here is another recipe for home curing and smoking your very own bacon. It’s easy, and good. It takes about 30 mins of prep, 7 days to cure and 3-4 hours on the smoker. The recipe calls for curing salt which you can ignore but it does have a place in this recipe. Also there’s a BLT recipe (like you need one) at the end.

 Shopping list

Bacon!

• 3-5 lbs pork belly, skin on
• 2 tbs. juniper berries, crushed
• 4 bay leaves, crumbled
• 1/4 cup kosher salt
• 2 tsp pink salt or curing salt – sodium nitrate (optional but suggested)
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 2 tbs of cracked whole peppercorns
• cherry wood chips

Rib-eye, Anchovy butter and smoke. Not much more needs to be said.

More below the fold… Obviously

This is my bastardized version of the chinese bbq Char-siu. I changed up a few things and techniques and added a few things but it’s pretty close. Plus it’s pork belly. Cherry wood smoked pork belly. So there. I’ve omitted the food coloring that gives traditional char-siu that neon red color. The kind you see hanging in shops in various China Towns across the US and I can only guess in the motherland as well. That just freaks me out a bit. I also chose to smoke it over cherry wood. Most recipes you’ll see for this do not involve any smoke but I’m from the damn south. If it’s pork and there’s a smoker available I’m likely to combine the two. Avoid the heavy hardwood smoke like hickory or mesquite, it will just overpower everything. Try and stick to fruit tree wood like apple or cherry. You can make this with various cuts of pork but my advice is to  use something with some fat. A tenderloin or loin will just be to dry for this preparation and you might end up with something between extremely overcooked pork leather and bbq tree bark. Pork Belly is my preferred cut as it will stand up to the smoker and will give you that unctuous fatty mouth feel that goes so well with BBQ of all kinds. This preparation can be used a number of ways. In a bastardized banh-mi with pickled vegis, in steamed buns, in a noodle dish like ginger scallion or a ramen with broth, or over your favorite scented rice. Or just crammed in your mouth by the sticky smokey handful, which you may find yourself doing. So grab your buddy and a sixer of beer and have at it.

Supervisor

More below the fold

Ahh yes Islay. That wind battered Scottish island from which the manly whisky comes. Smokey, peaty, peaty smokey, and big enough to put hair on your chest (and other parts). Ok that’s maybe a bit much but yes, Islay whisky has its own style even when it varies from it. While this is the first Islay I’m going to review, it’s not the first I’ve tried (make sure you pronounce it correctly… ‘eye-la‘ not ‘iz-lay’ ,  you’ll only make that mistake once in the company of scotch hounds or Scots). But in this price range it is by far the most bestest, greatest life changing thing ever. Really. I mean it like a 13-year-old means Skrillex is better than the Beatles. Well, sort of. Anyway… It’s a damn fine whisky. Ardbeg is on the south-west shore of the island and is a relative neighbor to a couple other famous Islay distilleries,Port Ellen, Lagavulin and Laphroaig. Though it was officially established by the MacDougall family in 1815, like many older distilleries it was probably in existence in some form or another years before. Cruising along for a century producing whisky mainly used in blends it ran into trouble and ceased production in the early 1980′s but reopened in 1989. Glenmorangie plc. acquired Ardbeg in 1997 and has since made a big push in the whisky world. I guess you can say it is a cult whisky judging by how many of its fans swarm after it. This in some part can be attributed to their slick marketing and fan club called the Ardbeg Committee and also in part to the halt in production in the 80′s and the limited availability that it created during the 90′s. This made the  old casks sitting in blenders warehouses jump in their desirability and value. Smart bottlers seized this opportunity releasing independent bottlings which added fuel to the cult status fire. Some claim quality has suffered under new ownership and management but I would have exactly no idea about that having only tasted their 10-year-old for the first time this past year. And I love it. I don’t care. Really. So much so I’ve savored the bottle since December and have just now purchased a replacement. The first re”peat” performance since diving into scotch… sorry. That was horrible. I’m ashamed.

Tasting notes. It’s a light straw color. Nose is light and crisp but layered with ocean, smoke, light citrus, lemon and some vanilla background. Mouth feel is oily but not heavy. Taste has a big hand-full of pepper surrounded by sweetness, smoke and seawater. Giving it a little time, some oak and more sweetness opens up always surrounded by campfire smoke. It finishes long and warm with more smoke and pepper and some other spice, maybe clove. If you want a smokey peaty whiskey to try, this is your bottle. It’s not going to crush your face like some other Islays, but it’s no kitten either. It’s well balanced. All of its parts enhancing each other. In this price range, easily one of my favorites. It will remain a mainstay. 46% ABV highly recommended

Tasso ham is  quick cured and smoked pork shoulder (boston butt). It’s very easy to make and is an important ingredient in dishes like Gumbo, Shrimp and Grits, soups and gravys. Again, as you’ll hear me say through out this blog, a high quality cut of pork is important. Quality ingredients give you quality product. Small heritage and organically fed breeds tend to not have the dried out lean meat that the mass produced breeds do and therefor are going to have more flavor and more fat. Fat is good. Maybe not good for you but good when you are making things with pork. Get fatty, well marbled pork. Period. If the hog is high quality the fat on it will also be high quality. Trust me, there is a difference. Ok back to the Tasso.

This recipe calls for a boston butt weighing around 3 pounds. The boston butt is a cut from the front leg of the hog at the shoulder. It is a muscle group that sees heavy use and that gives the meat a nice marbling and a stronger pork flavor. Have your butcher debone the butt which will make slicing it much easier. Slice the butt into 1 to 2 inch thick slices. I tend to do 1 inch because the cure has more surface area to act on, and the meat doesn’t spend that much time in the cure.

Ultimate porky goodness.

I love bacon. I love how it smells, the way the crispy fat explodes when you bite it, the way it makes every thing and anything taste better, the way it permeates the house after cooking up a good batch, the usefulness, the smokeyness….the…the…. god damn everything. So I figured it was about time to go through the surprisingly easy process of making my own bacon. I headed down to my favorite butcher here in Charleston and picked up a 2 lbs. slab of pork belly (the recipe below calls for 5 lbs.). Using the handbook for cured meat, Charcuterie, I got my mise en plas ready and set forth to make the greatest thing that has ever been created in the history of man… bacon.

Ingredients

• 2 oz. / 50 g kosher salt
• 2 tsp / 12 grams pink salt (curing salt with nitrite that is dyed a pink color to distinguish it). Pick up the book to find out why. You can leave this out, I do now.
• 1/4 cup / 50 g maple sugar or packed dark brown sugar. I actually used the darker molasses sugar for this
• 1/4 cup / 60 ml maple syrup (I used a higher quality pure maple syrup)
• 1 5-lbs. slab of pork belly (skin on or off)
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