Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

OK - I started a separate thread for this as there's probably a few questions and I didn't want to hijack the other thread.

Making Bacon (no puns, I've heard them all and not just once)

There's 3 main steps to producing your own bacon and fortunately they're all easy.

1) Tell your butcher you want a pork belly and he'll get one in for you. Check with him first as some don't always have them on hand. This should weigh 2-3kg and cost you around $20-$30. Could be a little cheaper but my butcher sources the Plantagenet Free Range ones so they cost a little more (worth it though).

Ask him to remove the rib bones for you as he'll do it in about a tenth of the time of you or me. Make sure you get these as well.

2) Now the belly needs to be cured using a dry cure which is basically a mixture of salt and sugar (recipe below). I use about 80g of cure for a 2.5kg belly.

If aesthetics bother you you can trim the belly so it's nice and squared and throw the trimmings to the dog, but unless you're going to serve the end result in a restaurant I wouldn't bother. I usually just cut it in half across it's length so that I have two pieces that are easy to handle.

Simply rub the cure all over the with your hands, making sure to rub it into any crevices. Now, hold up the belly and shake it a little to remove any excess salt and place it in a plastic bag of suitable size that can be sealed pretty well (Zip-Loc or do a really good job with the twisty thing). Make sure you've squeezed out all the air before closing fully.

If you feel the pork with your finger now, it should be pretty soft and squishy. When it's cured, it should feel harder, as if it has been cooked. Now put the belly pieces in the fridge and keep turning them over every couple of days.

It's going to depend on the thickness of the belly, but after 7-8 days start feeling the belly and once it feels firm in the thickest part, it's cured ! I find the larger free range bellies take about 10-12 days to cure.

Basic Dry Cure
500g salt (non-iodised and no anticaking agents)(I use sea salt)
250g white sugar
20g pink salt (see below)

Mix all the above together and store in an airtight glass jar and use as required

The pink salt is a food trade term for a salt mix that is 93.75% salt and 6.25% sodium nitrite (found in green leafy veges and root veges). The mixture is dyed pink to avoid accidental usage as the nitrite can be dangerous in large amounts. It's main use is to prevent the occurence of botulism bacteria. I have made it without it and it was fine, but as my kids eat this bacon as well I lean towards the safety side. The commeercial producers use around 4-6 times the amount that I do.

3) Once your belly is fully cured, take it out of the bag, rinse under running water and then pat dry with paper towel.

Now, simply setup what ever smoking implement you intend to use and give the belly pieces a good couple of hours in there. When it cools, it's ready to use. Compare it with commercial bacon and you'll likely notice it's a lot less sweet.

This will now keep in the fridge for a couple of weeks, or will freeze for several months.

Feel free to add spices etc to the cure and play around with the flavour until you hit on spomething you really like.

Enjoy

P.S. I'll get some pictures of my next batch up in a couple of days

POISON
Pink salt is a US term, where they put a colorant in it, here Aus. it's white, mostly known as 2% sodium nitrite
and comes in 1.7 kg bags.
If the butcher does have one opened, you may get just the amount needed, else its about 10 bucks a bag.
POISON

Steve

I don't know whether you read the whole post or just reacted with your poison, but if you had quoted the next couple of sentences you would have seen that I explained what [/color]it was, why, and that it was optional !

As written, the recipe contains 0.16% nitrite. If you believ that is a bigger risk than botulism for my kids then I'm speechless.

I did read the whole post, and I know a bit about it, you do must know what you doing.

Agreed - that's why I recommend the pink salt as there's no way it will ever be mistaken for normal salt.

I've never understood why it's available here in the form that's in your photo.

Don’t know WA but here on East Cost never seen it pink and it’s not for sale to the public.
You may get it from a butcher if he does know you well enough.
Being white, that’s what makes it so dangerous, easily to be mistaken for something else.

Kosher salt in the recipes is our rock salt, bit too expensive,
wandered if the “B” pool salt will be clean enough to be used instead, what’s your opinion?

You're right Steve - found it very hard to source. Got mine sent over from the US when I ordered a couple of other things.

There is a vendor here in Oz called Misty Gully and you can buy the pink salt through them - I think they just bring it form the US in bulk and bag it up, which is good as it keeps the cost down.

I have a pretty good relationship with my butcher and while he did offer me some, he was clearly uncomfortable about it so I didn't take him up on it. Oz government seems to have taken the Big Brother approach and decided we're too immature to be trusted with it ourselves.

The B salt should be fine if they are simply scraping it off of salt lakes. No need for them to incur extra costs by adding anything to it if it's just going in the pool. The only thing I'd like to know is what lakes ? Are they in the middle of bugger all, or in agricultural distrcits where a number of things could have blown onto them (read herbicides etc).

Depends on your budget I gues about the expense, but I buy good sea salt and use a fair bit in curing, brining etc, I'm still only spending maybe $30 a year on salt, probably a bit less. And I don't spend anytime then worrying about anti-oxidising agents, flavour enhancers etc.

I do grind a lot of my salt up which means I can use less as I've increased the surface are, maybe that helps.

If you do try the B salt Steve I'll be interested to hear how the results fare.

Great and thanks

Going to order the pork belly this week. Think I'll probably skip the pink salt, at least on the first one. Basicaly I don't think it will last long enough to worry about

I'm very keen to see the results. I've wanted to make my own ham and bacon for a long time, I've read so many different methods in the past, especially for hams and cured pork. Lots of really simple ones too including methods like "rub the leg with salt, hang in a cool place. Wipe off the muck that has oozed out of the meat and rub in more salt, then hang again. " I can't remember how many times you salted it, perhaps 3-4 times. Then they said to just cut off any bits that looked bad before eating..

Sounded a bit dodgy....

So I did my own olives instead, much safer, tasted damn good too.....

I'll be smoking mine Wed or Thurs night so will have photos up on day after that.

If interested, there’s a Slovak Ham recipe that was run on Vasilis Garden.

An excellent book I mentioned earlier well worth having.

Back in the old country we used to kill a 160 – 180 + kg pig every winter.
And as the French would say, everything would be used except the oink.

Most of it smoked in every possible way. T’was 40+ years ago.
The slaughter at the farm had to be done by a state licensed butcher who would take some liver samples for a lab check.

Every available hand would be put to work, even if it meant skipping school for a day or two .

For the salting we would always use the corse salt, never the finer cooking one.
The bigger crystals have higher “absorption” capacity without imparting too much salty taste to the meat.
But if to salty, you can always simmer the meat for few minutes to fix it before eating.

We have wild hogs starting to overrun our hunting property, we normally get a few sows every winter but they go nocturnal as soon as the hunting pressure starts. We normally use the meat to up the oil content in our venison sausage. Wild sows are good eating would love to try this! Bacon makes everything taste better! We take a few boars just to try to keep their numbers down but the older ones are just plain nasty! Meats stinks cooking it. We may set out some hog traps to try harder to rid the area of hogs but get the added benefit of pork! I have some plans for a cinder block smokehouse. I've seen a few metal buildings burn down when pork fat built up all over everything. I will be watching this thread, love this kind of stuff!

BRB, wasn't it over in your neck of the woods that some teenager shot a record breaking hog-zilla a few years ago?

Actually it was killed in your state. Although I did see the same pics floating aroung on emails claiming different states. There was a followup where it was dug up to try to prove it's weight.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... zilla.html
Here is one from Alabama even bigger.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,275524,00.html
This is why I don't creep hunt hogs anymore!

Heh, further proof that I don't watch the news .