Part two: Bacon and Pancetta. The dry cure sucked out a lot of the moisture from the meat as it sat in the fridge, creating its own brine, as seen below. After about 5 days, it was time to get the meat out of the salty brine. The remaining salt was scrubbed off the meat and thoroughly washed.
The two slabs designated to be bacon were dried off, and placed into new bags into the fridge. I added some maple syrup to one of them, and garlic and pepper to the other so the flavour could permeate a bit before smoking. (The scallops pictured on the Valentine's Day post were wrapped with the maple bacon from this stage.)
The slab designated to be pancetta was also scrubbed and dried off, then covered with a thick layer of cracked black pepper.
Then came the fun part - rolling up and trussing the tightly rolled meat.
Rolling - easy, trussing - tricky.
And then the easiest part - Hang it up, and let it cure.
Thank god the cats can't jump higher than two feet - the basement is usually their domain, but the cool, dry environment down there was very nice for the pancetta.
The finished product, after curing for almost four weeks:
No comments:
Post a Comment