Totally given up on bacon
Discussion
mattdaniels said:
I got chatting to a local farmer in my village yesterday and ended up with a sample of his home cured collar bacon to try. I'd never heard of collar bacon before.
I left it in the fridge overnight to defrost and had some for breakfast this morning. Dry fried, no oil, nothing. Just bacon and a hot pan. Almost nothing came out of it save for a few dribbles of fat, and there was zero shrinkage.
Have to say it tasted sublime. Very tender to cut and with a mild gently smoked flavour, more on the gammon/ham side than in your face smoked supermarket bacon and very unsalty too.
I'd definitely recommend trying something like this if you are bored of supermarket bacon.
I'd hope that was cheaper than back, middle or streaky bacon?I left it in the fridge overnight to defrost and had some for breakfast this morning. Dry fried, no oil, nothing. Just bacon and a hot pan. Almost nothing came out of it save for a few dribbles of fat, and there was zero shrinkage.
Have to say it tasted sublime. Very tender to cut and with a mild gently smoked flavour, more on the gammon/ham side than in your face smoked supermarket bacon and very unsalty too.
I'd definitely recommend trying something like this if you are bored of supermarket bacon.
Pork collar usually ends up in the sausage. Usually very fatty but that looks like its come from quite a lean pig. Looks nice.
This seems a good deal. 2.27kg of drycure for about £15 delivered.
https://www.livelean.co.uk/sliced-back-bacon-2-27k...
https://www.livelean.co.uk/sliced-back-bacon-2-27k...
mattdaniels said:
227bhp said:
Yes that looks good, you've nailed it in your post though, it's Gammon.
Gammon is from the hind leg. That bacon is from the back of the neck.Fastchas said:
I'd hope that was cheaper than back, middle or streaky bacon?
The price is in the first picture.
If it swims like a fish and tastes like a fish it is a fish The price is in the first picture.
But yeah you got me thinking, so I picked up a big lump of Gammon today, dragged it home and hacked it into rough slices the best I could. It's still got the same water content, but lean and the same price as cheap bacon so it's a bit of an improvement. You can't have everything, so some er, rustic bacon sarnies coming up over the next few weeks.
a bit of a resurrection here, and quite a few words, but I wanted to tell you about my bacon at home experience...
I'm a man who likes his bacon, and like the OP have really gone off supermarket stuff. I noticed previous posters making their own, and by some good fortune, I was bought a river cottage "curing and smoking" course for Christmas which has given me the confidence to try it at home. The main thing I learned is to use enough salt in your curing mix (they recommend no less than 3% salt either by weight for dry curing, or in solution for brining), and not to include salpetre or any nitrate/nitrite in the cure mix - trust in the salt and curing process - and using the fridge.
For the last few days I've now taken over one of the salad crisper trays in the fridge, with 2.2 kilos of belly pork (cost from a local rare breed farm shop about £8 a kilo) sitting nicely in a salty/sugary mix with juniper, bay and black pepper in the mix for good measure.
I bought a 12.5kg sack of food grade PDV (Pure Dried Vacuum) salt from Amazon - cost about £11.50, very fine, ideal `for curing. Should last for ages.
3 days in, I've been turning the bellies daily, they are hardening up and losing liquid nicely. Today I couldn't resist and cut off a couple of sneaky slices and fried them up. They do already taste like bacon, which is encouraging. No shrinkage in the pan at all, no white stuff, no boiling off before the fat starts to render out - perfect!
Bacon curing in the fridge.
On Sunday I'll be taking what is now bacon out of the tray, giving it a good rinse and dry down, and back in the fridge for a couple more days. Steven Lamb of River Cottage HQ recommends at this point instead of putting back in the fridge, you can hang this somewhere dark and drafty (a badly constructed old shed, cellar or mountain cave if you have one - as long as you have a decent draft and a temperature of 10-15C, or even warmer and humidity of 60-80%) to give it some decent air drying, but the fridge will do fine. At this point you should have good, cured, dried, bacon ready to eat, but this is the point when you can also get smoking...
Now I love smoked bacon, and tinkering around with smoking meat, so I was trying to figure out the best way to do bacon. Down at River Cottage, Mr Lamb had knocked together a smoker out of an old gas canister that piped smoke into a rough and ready shed, about the size of a small wardrobe. But any sealed up box would be suitable.
I already have a Weber smokey Mountain for hot smoking ribs and pulled pork, chicken, lamb, salmon etc (plus other porky delights like smoked hams and ham hocks, and smoked pigs in blankets at Xmas) so I was wondering how I could turn this into a cold smoker.
I wasn't keen on building a separate firebox and piping into the Weber, but I have seen these spiral mesh smoke generators which you light one end and leave to smoulder through a line of sawdust (ProQ make them http://www.souschef.co.uk/proq-cold-smoke-generato... that you just place inside at the bottom of the smoker. Plus they were recommended by the River Cottage folk as being very effective.
But at £35 they upset my home-made bacon sensibilities. Some searching about online I found you can make a useful alternative from a metal kitchen sieve! (you push the middle up to make a doughnut shape which you put sawdust in, set light to one end of the sawdust and you get hours of smoke as it smoulders around.
So I liberated an old sieve for the purpose and modified it for smoking use.
Home made smoke generator - saved myself £34.99!
Talking of modding, I also got round to doing what I wanted to do for a while for the Weber and improve on control of my hot smoking - get some stove rope gasket and heat resistant sealant for the Weber and apply to the lid, the base and access hatch. For cold smoking purposes this should seal it up much better so that a good cloud of smoke would build up inside. For hot smoking, this should also make the vents on the bottom and top work more effectively and accurately to control heat and draft.
A test run of the smoke "generator", had the sawdust nicely lit, and gradually smouldering around the sieve, giving off a decent amount of fragant smoke. It filled up the Weber with a dense cloud, and from the kitchen window I could keep an eye on things by seeing a continuous blue stream of smoke coming out of the top vent.
In all, I got about 5 hours on about 2/3rds of the sieve full of sawdust, so I could probably get about 8hrs on a full run, which should be good for a couple of sides of bacon. I cheated a bit, and for sawdust, I bought a kilo of oak dust from Amazon, but I'll see if I can make my own as I have some apple and cherry chunks I use on the hot smoker. I just need to work out the best way to convert solid wood into shavings at home.
While I was testing the smoke, I chucked some cheddar and some haddock I had found in the freezer on my test runs, and they both came out very nice indeed - a good, light smoke flavour, and a nice colour. (Haddock got used in a kedgeree and a big thumbs up from Mrs P).
Not bacon - cheese!
So in a few days I should have proper bacon, and have it smoked just as I like it. I'll let you all know how it goes.
I also got taught how to make salami, chorizo, nduja etc, so am thinking about how to do that. Its a bit more involved, plus I'd need a bit more equipment (meat grinder, sausage machine) and need to find a proper place to both ferment (I am eyeing up the airing cupboard) and then air drying (there is a corner of the kitchen which is looking good), but we shall see. I'll get the bacon done first...
I'm a man who likes his bacon, and like the OP have really gone off supermarket stuff. I noticed previous posters making their own, and by some good fortune, I was bought a river cottage "curing and smoking" course for Christmas which has given me the confidence to try it at home. The main thing I learned is to use enough salt in your curing mix (they recommend no less than 3% salt either by weight for dry curing, or in solution for brining), and not to include salpetre or any nitrate/nitrite in the cure mix - trust in the salt and curing process - and using the fridge.
For the last few days I've now taken over one of the salad crisper trays in the fridge, with 2.2 kilos of belly pork (cost from a local rare breed farm shop about £8 a kilo) sitting nicely in a salty/sugary mix with juniper, bay and black pepper in the mix for good measure.
I bought a 12.5kg sack of food grade PDV (Pure Dried Vacuum) salt from Amazon - cost about £11.50, very fine, ideal `for curing. Should last for ages.
3 days in, I've been turning the bellies daily, they are hardening up and losing liquid nicely. Today I couldn't resist and cut off a couple of sneaky slices and fried them up. They do already taste like bacon, which is encouraging. No shrinkage in the pan at all, no white stuff, no boiling off before the fat starts to render out - perfect!
Bacon curing in the fridge.
On Sunday I'll be taking what is now bacon out of the tray, giving it a good rinse and dry down, and back in the fridge for a couple more days. Steven Lamb of River Cottage HQ recommends at this point instead of putting back in the fridge, you can hang this somewhere dark and drafty (a badly constructed old shed, cellar or mountain cave if you have one - as long as you have a decent draft and a temperature of 10-15C, or even warmer and humidity of 60-80%) to give it some decent air drying, but the fridge will do fine. At this point you should have good, cured, dried, bacon ready to eat, but this is the point when you can also get smoking...
Now I love smoked bacon, and tinkering around with smoking meat, so I was trying to figure out the best way to do bacon. Down at River Cottage, Mr Lamb had knocked together a smoker out of an old gas canister that piped smoke into a rough and ready shed, about the size of a small wardrobe. But any sealed up box would be suitable.
I already have a Weber smokey Mountain for hot smoking ribs and pulled pork, chicken, lamb, salmon etc (plus other porky delights like smoked hams and ham hocks, and smoked pigs in blankets at Xmas) so I was wondering how I could turn this into a cold smoker.
I wasn't keen on building a separate firebox and piping into the Weber, but I have seen these spiral mesh smoke generators which you light one end and leave to smoulder through a line of sawdust (ProQ make them http://www.souschef.co.uk/proq-cold-smoke-generato... that you just place inside at the bottom of the smoker. Plus they were recommended by the River Cottage folk as being very effective.
But at £35 they upset my home-made bacon sensibilities. Some searching about online I found you can make a useful alternative from a metal kitchen sieve! (you push the middle up to make a doughnut shape which you put sawdust in, set light to one end of the sawdust and you get hours of smoke as it smoulders around.
So I liberated an old sieve for the purpose and modified it for smoking use.
Home made smoke generator - saved myself £34.99!
Talking of modding, I also got round to doing what I wanted to do for a while for the Weber and improve on control of my hot smoking - get some stove rope gasket and heat resistant sealant for the Weber and apply to the lid, the base and access hatch. For cold smoking purposes this should seal it up much better so that a good cloud of smoke would build up inside. For hot smoking, this should also make the vents on the bottom and top work more effectively and accurately to control heat and draft.
A test run of the smoke "generator", had the sawdust nicely lit, and gradually smouldering around the sieve, giving off a decent amount of fragant smoke. It filled up the Weber with a dense cloud, and from the kitchen window I could keep an eye on things by seeing a continuous blue stream of smoke coming out of the top vent.
In all, I got about 5 hours on about 2/3rds of the sieve full of sawdust, so I could probably get about 8hrs on a full run, which should be good for a couple of sides of bacon. I cheated a bit, and for sawdust, I bought a kilo of oak dust from Amazon, but I'll see if I can make my own as I have some apple and cherry chunks I use on the hot smoker. I just need to work out the best way to convert solid wood into shavings at home.
While I was testing the smoke, I chucked some cheddar and some haddock I had found in the freezer on my test runs, and they both came out very nice indeed - a good, light smoke flavour, and a nice colour. (Haddock got used in a kedgeree and a big thumbs up from Mrs P).
Not bacon - cheese!
So in a few days I should have proper bacon, and have it smoked just as I like it. I'll let you all know how it goes.
I also got taught how to make salami, chorizo, nduja etc, so am thinking about how to do that. Its a bit more involved, plus I'd need a bit more equipment (meat grinder, sausage machine) and need to find a proper place to both ferment (I am eyeing up the airing cupboard) and then air drying (there is a corner of the kitchen which is looking good), but we shall see. I'll get the bacon done first...
Edited by prand on Saturday 4th March 01:42
I live in Harlem, and went for breakfast today at Amy Ruths, a local soul food joint.
The relevant news: they deep fry their bacon. My wife (who is Southern) says that's the way she grew up with it.
Even for a fry-friendly, meat loving guy, it was a little extreme!!
The waffles were incredible, however.
The relevant news: they deep fry their bacon. My wife (who is Southern) says that's the way she grew up with it.
Even for a fry-friendly, meat loving guy, it was a little extreme!!
The waffles were incredible, however.
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