Makin the bacons

Hey everybody. I made bacon. 

Started with some high quality but affordable pork belly (from Fairway), and shazzizalazzazamzam… I had awesomely smoked cured porklicious bacon. I had read lots of how to’s and it turned out that to get it done I ended up pulling different info together from about 3 or four different sites. I’ll explain later….

First step, get yourself some really good pork belly. I got mine from Fairway, a great supermarket in Red Hook Brooklyn. Next, take your hiney to the Brooklyn Kitchen, another great market in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. There you can get the other ingredients you’ll need: fresh kosher salt, pink curing salts, and a bag of potato rolls. You’ll need these to much on when sitting around trying to figure out how to a) cook bacon and b) how to pack on another 30 lbs to your already quickly winterizing (read fattening) body. Plus you can soak croutons made from this in a little bacon fat for that “cupcake dipped in sugar” effect.

Then you’ll whip up a quick curing mix for your bacon. Mine had curing or pink salt, brown sugar, salt, molasses, and cracked pepper. K.I.S.S…

Roll the bacon in it, let it hangout in the fridge, flat for 7 days inside a ziplock with the curing solution. Flip it daily to make sure the curing goes well and evenly.

After seven days, it gets tricky. You COULD, legally take this out of the bag, rinse and that is called American bacon. Get it sliced and start your pork holiday, alone, with a friend, pet, Real Doll, Púca, girlfriend, husband, granny, etc.

Buuut, you might want to go that extra mile, make that leap, into that giant mystery of smoking and preserving meats.  Charcuterie as the kids call it these days.

To be fair, I think I got extremely lucky with the outcome of the final product. I didn’t want to smoke up my apartment, hickory is not a good look when it comes to home fragrance unless you are a bear or hunting a bear. So I got a “smoke-bag” by Emeril, supposedly a great way to smoke meats veggies etc.

Trouble is, these bags aren’t used to cure meats, only to cook them, so I couldn’t find any direction on how to treat a piece of pork belly without cooking it all the way. Anyhow. I think I alternated between high and very low temperature (around 200 degrees) for about 20 minutes and then got really nervous and then popped it out of the oven and bag and BOOM. Bacon. 

We took it to the corner deli, which usually is the perfect picture of total apathy towards customers…praying they would slice our pride and joy without charging an arm and leg.  but this guy totally sliced and wrapped my bacon for me. AND FOR FREE TOO. Good dude!

Obviously BLT’s were the natural choice to showcase the new bounty. Avocado, burgundy heirloom tomatoes, baby lettuce, some plain baguette and of course, bacon. Also a touch of mayo. BOOM. 

Can’t wait to try and do more of this type of thing. if we had a bigger piece of belly, we could have rolled it up into pancetta, experimented with juniper and other strange spices… sky’s the limit. next up… homemade ricotta. 

hollers.