The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Pigs => Topic started by: egglady on November 23, 2010, 08:04:21 pm
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We had a couple of pigs butchered a few months back and popped pretty much everything in the freezer.
As they were berkshires, we were told that they made better pork than bacon.
HOWEVER, we fancy trying to make some bacon if we can.
So here's my question:
joints have been in the freezer for about 4 months. . can we take them out and defrost them and then make then into bacon without killing ourselves from some horrible disease?
and if we can, advice welcomed please!
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Defrost your joint and I'm pretty sure you are ok to make bacon. Not sure about being able to refreeze it afterwards though, I would think not.
Suggest you make in small batches so that you can get through it without the need to store other than short term in the fridge.
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Yes, thawed meat is absolutely fine, it'll probably cure quicker, too. We do it that way all the time, otherwise there'd be an awful lot of bacon the first month or so and then 11 months of culinary hardship! ;)
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thanks.
Eve how do you make it into bacon please?
oh and what part do you use?
sorry to be a thicko! first timer and all that jazz!
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Don't worry, it took me aaaages to find it all out!
Use belly, it has the best meat / fat ratio. Loin is drier, you need the fat running through the meat to moisten it. We get our butcher to cut all bellies up in fridge-sized portions, and we have a few flat plastic boxes with also fit between the shelves of our ordinary (domestic) fridge.
Weigh the meat, and if you're like me, write the weight down on a piece of paper :D
What you need:
There's no need to buy special nitrites / nitrates, or (heavens forbid!) liquid smoke - yuck, yuck, yuck! You just need a lot of salt. Buy big packs if you can, just avoid the really cheap harsh tasting stuff. Fine salt is better than coarse as it penetrates the meat better. One day I'll get 'round to getting kosher salt, which is apparently best of all, but One Day hasn't quite arrived yet... :)
I'll tell you about amounts needed in a minute...
You also need a flat plastic box which will fit in your fridge or frost-free garage or a similar place. Never use metal tins or boxes.
How it works:
The meat will be cured by the salt and. Once cured, the nasties will be out of the meat so it will last for ages.
It works by the salt drawing all the meat juices out and thereby drawing all the microbes etc out. You know it's cured when no more juices run out of the meat. Then you're left with meat with lots of salt in it, which will, of course, taste far too salty. Even our ancestors didn't eat it that salty.
There are 2 ways to combat this salty taste, and both are used for each piece of meat:
- add sugar to the salt (again, amounts follow later) to take the harsh edge off
- soak the meat in cold fresh water for 1 hour, tip the water out and put fresh water in the box again and leave for another hour.
The latter sounds strange as you've just spent several days or even a week getting all the moisture content out of the meat, so why bring it all back in? Well, we know for sure that it works, and the way I look at it is that the salt pushed the meat juices out (so inc bacteria, microbes or whatever you want to call the bits that will make meat go rotten), and that the soaking only brings clean water in. Chemistry experts will be able to explain it (and probably prove me wrong :D), but hey, we know it works.
What to do next:
Well, once it's cured you can safely eat it, even in its raw state. It tastes nicer fried, though :yum:
If it still tastes too salty to your liking, you can blanch your slices or lardons for 30-45 seconds before frying. You could also not bother with the 1 or 2 hour soaking mentioned above, and always blanch each slice before frying, but I can't be bothered with that. :)
You will find that after a year of eating your own bacon, even the most expensive bacon you can buy in supermarkets will taste insipid. But by then you'll have pigs again to make your next lot from! ;)
To smoke or not to smoke:
You could also smoke the bacon once it's been cured with the salt, and the smoke particles will cure the meat for a second time, giving it a superbly long shelf life and great taste. Once the meat's been cured by the salt, leave it uncovered in the fridge for 2 days, it's supposed to start feeling slightly sticky and should 'take' the smoke better.
Either hot smoke it (we use apple wood in a £60 smoker we bought from Amazon - no need to spend hundreds of pounds on a smoker!) until the temperature of the meat reaches... uuuh... 65F it was, I believe, which takes easily 3-4 hours. Make sure the temperature in the smoker doesn't go above about 90C (sorry about mixing up F and C, it's stuck in my memory like that - I can look up the exact measurements tonight).
Or cold smoke it - for this it goes in the same smoker (or you can use a barbeque), and we have this little £25 cold smoker thingy-what'sit from Mark's BBQ's (I think, working from memory here) in which you put wood dust, light it using an ordinary tea light just so that the wood dust smokes, and leave it to do its thing for 10 hours. It works a treat! Otherwise you have to make a fire somewhere, then install a duct to cool the smoke and transfer it to wherever you've put the meat. Google for a few hours and you'll see some ingenious contraptions. I took the easy way out with that little cold smoker thingy (to use a professional term). ;)
Whichever method you choose, have the fattiest side of the bacon upwards, so that when it melts a bit it moistens the meat underneath.
How much salt, sugar etc you need and what do you do with it:
We tend to use 50g of salt per kilo of meat, which is quite a lot. You can then add anything from 10g to 30g of sugar, but personally I don't like it sweet (and I hate the taste of molasses). You can add lots of pepper, juniper berries, thyme... the list is endles depending on your taste. Google for ideas and then experiment until you find your favourite cure. :yum:
Some people use less salt, that's ok as long as the meat is fully cured (see below).
Rub the cure all over the meat, pushing it in every nook and crannie. Then put it in a plastic box, put the lid on and leave it in the fridge. Some people use ziplock bags instead of boxes.
Meat juices will start leaking out of the meat. We're not talking pints, here, just quite a few tablespoons or even a cup full, depending on quality and size of the meat.
Some say to leave the liquid in the box / bag, others say to tip it out. We tip it out as then it's easier to see how much liquid leaches out each day and to know when it's finished curing i.e. when no more moisture comes out. If the meat remains dry for a day, it's ready.
It will take at least 4 days, sometimes even a week. My own bacon a few days ago seemed to cure very quickly, so I covered it with salt again and yes, quite a bit of liquid started leaching out again for one more day so I must have put too little cure on it (hence why I said to write down the weight of the meat ;D). The cured meat should feel quite firm inside at its thickest point, not too squashy.
How to store it:
If you have a chimney that's used, you can hang it in there. We just keep it in the fridge, as I would imagine most people do. ;)
Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall says to wrap the cured bacon in anything but plastic. I'm not sure about that, as we used to keep it wrapped in clingfilm and it always lasted really well. Then reading HFW's suggestion a few weeks ago I put the bacon in greaseproof paper, but it dried out. So we'll be going back to cling film. Mind you, it never lasts more than a few weeks in our house, anyway, that might make a difference! :yum:
Make sure everything you use and touch is scrupulously clean, and if you have clean / disposable rubber gloves then use those too (plus that saves you from getting salt from under your fingernails). Work in a cold place, too.
Oh dear, it's half past ten already, :o I really need to get to work - I'll read this again tonight and might add a few things, gotta run now! :wave:
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You can freeze it once its bacon. (according to our Dept. H & Vetinaire)
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Eve...excellent post and thank you for sharing...i'm now looking forward to making bacon as you have explained the process so very well...especially for us 'bacon virgins'!!lol :)
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I froze my belly pieces, thawed them and then re froze, sliced, after making the bacon. i think curing counts as "cooking" in freezing terms, so it's safe to eat (well I haven't died yet anyway)
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I should have added that with cold smoking it doesn't matter how high the temperature of the meat becomes during the cold smoking process (as opposed to hot smoking), as it's the duration of the smoking that counts - cold smoke if for long enough and there will be enough smoke particles in the meat to kill any nasties that survived the salt curing. Many, many hours...
Finally, the River Cottage Cookbook is good for bacon and salami's (not the Meatbook, that one only refers back to the Cookbook), and Charcuterie from Ruhlman & Polceyn, which is my favourite.
Enjoy! :wave:
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We took the easy (but more expensive) way out and got the butcher to do it ;D
But I REALLY fancy having a go now, just thinking about all the flavour possibilities :yum:
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just thinking about all the flavour possibilities
I'm thinking of a herb-crusted air dried ham, at the moment... I bet it would work... :yum:
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just thinking about all the flavour possibilities
I'm thinking of a herb-crusted air dried ham, at the moment... I bet it would work... :yum:
Oh stop it ! You're making me hungry ! I'm away for a roll and bacon ;) My own, of course - no more shop bought muck for me ;D (well, until this lot runs out :'()
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thank you so much for this - especially eve! it is so fabulously detailed, even a divvy like me can understand it!
I have started the process today & my only question is, the belly has been tied by the butcher, should i be untying it to rub the salt in or will rubbing it all around be enough?
also i am stuck with what to add to the salt as i dont know what we'll like, will it just be ok if i add nothing this time round do you think?
thanks
laura
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Egglady, no you do need to unroll the belly. You need to rub salt in to as large a part of the bacon as possible, including all the edges, nooks and crannies.
I add sugar to my cure. About 25% sugar to the total amount of salt.
Although Eve's cure sounded great.
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hilarysmum, any particular kind of sugar? brown/white?
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We've never had any belly rolled, we're bacon addicts ;D
Curing may take longer, I suppose, which is fine, but maybe you can't check if it's firm enough easily when it's all rolled up? But it might be easier to store in the fridge whilst curing when it's not a big flat slab that barely fits on the shelf as with our first attempt ;)
If you want rashers or lardons rather than round circled slices you can cut the twine, it'll flatten again easily.
Come to think of it, round slices might fit on a round bun more easily...
Come to think of it part 2: hubby probably likes ordinary straight rashers because then there are bits sticking out and he thinks he gets extra that way :D)
I add whichever sugar we have, usually organic (non-bleached) caster sugar. Some cures talk about maple syrup (sugar heaven, can empty a tin in a week!) or molasses (sugar hell, hate the stuff!).
Enjoy!
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Its a matter of choice and availability. White is cheapest so if you have plenty use that. Enjoy your bacon. You will never taste better once you have got the recipe to suit you.
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I do think it would be quicker and safer to cut the twin and to salt all of the meat. It would certainly cure quicker and more evenly. Unless of course you are doing a brine cure bacon.
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HM = I dont even KNOW what a brine cure bacon is!!!
so i think i will cut the twine and just salt and sugar it all over. i can always tie it up again afterwards presumably?
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You can tie it back up again, but it's easier slicing if it lies flat on a board.
This way of curing is dry curing. You can also wet cure a.k.a. putting it in a brine, this is a salt cure where the meat has been put in litres of very salty water. It's used for hams (not air dried hams, they are dry cured), have a look at HilarysMum's "how to bake a ham" thread a page lower down on this forum. Took me a few hours of reading up on it to get my head around it all! Those hams are wet cured (brine) first, then soaked and then boiled (make sure you change the water a few times as the meat is much saltier when warm) or roasted.
With all that bacon and ham, if you're anything like us then pretty soon you'll be wanting a professional meat slicer! (We did, got it on ebay and are thrilled with it - makes the bacon last longer as the rashers are much slimmer! :D)
Eve :wave:
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I have been salting bacon today...thanks to Eves fantastic earlier post and hilarysmums cure....well 2 for 1 is a good deal:)
I have done 2 loins for back bacon adding juniper berries, thyme and lots of black pepper to the cure, 2 half bellys with just cure and added black pepper and 2 half bellys with cure plus ground clove. The half bellys weighed around 2kgs each and I used 50g of cure per kilo as recommended. I have half bellys in the freezer to make bacon later on next year. I have also written the amount of ingredients in a note book so if we like it I can make it again...i usually chuck abit of this and a bit of that in my recipes ;)
I have now asked my oldest son and hubby to make me a smoker....dont want much do I???!!lol
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I have now asked my oldest son and hubby to make me a smoker....dont want much do I???!!lol
Perfectly reasonable! ;D
We bought a "Kingsford Bullet Smoker Cart" on Amazon last year for only £60 - on some other websites it was over £90! It's essentially an upright closed barbeque with a thermometer. We needed another barbeque anyway and we're not that good at building things ourselves. In fact, we're rather bad at it ;)
Make lots of salt cure as you may need to rub it on a few more times - it keeps on being different each time we cure as some slabs of meat are thin and long with lots of flappy bits and crannies, others thick and small with little surface area, and it also depends on how small the grain of the salt is. Better too much than too little.
We bought organic belly from the supermarket a few years ago and the amount of water that came out of it was huge!
I'm off to drink some more of that ham stock, now, I had put some vegetables in it and it tastes really good! :yum:
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I have now asked my oldest son and hubby to make me a smoker....dont want much do I???!!lol
sarha, ask them to make TWO and I'll buy the second one off you!
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I have now asked my oldest son and hubby to make me a smoker....dont want much do I???!!lol
Perfectly reasonable! ;D
ha ha ....they dont think so!! Think it might be something made from whatever we have lying around...I cant spend anymore money this close to xmas!!
Make lots of salt cure as you may need to rub it on a few more times -
I have!!! Its in a large tupperware box and ready when needed but thanks for sharing that info:)
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I have now asked my oldest son and hubby to make me a smoker....dont want much do I???!!lol
sarha, ask them to make TWO and I'll buy the second one off you!
You obviously dont know my hubby ;D ;D ;D ;D I had to wait 8 years for a kitchen!!!
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Eve, I have so much confidence in you, I just googled for the Kingsford Bullet Smoker Cart....and bought one!!!!!
ta for everything!
sarha, tell hubby if he doesnt make you one, you'll just go off and buy your own!!!
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Ohhhh - Kingsford Bullet Smoker Cart - never seen one of these before. None via amazon, egglady, what was the best price you could find? Looks large enough to pop a legga ham in for smoking?
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found it for £79 and thought seeing eve bought hers a few years ago that that was an ok price.
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Mmmmm... bacon lardons.... crunchy salty bits of bacon in creamy mashed potatoes... :yum:
You can keep on rubbing the salt in the surface area of the meat every day if you want to be sure it cures well, you can use what's still left in the box the bacon is curing in, or some of your fresh batch if there's nothing left in the box. Once you've finished curing, you chuck the salt that's been in the box.
Count on 7 days or so for curing, give or take a few (but 4 would probably be too short, and 10 would be too long unless it's a very large piece of meat).
Previously frozen meat seems to cure faster than fresh meat.
I'm amazed at how well salt preserves meat. 2-3% of salt to a kilo of mince and after a few weeks of drying you've got salami!
£79 is a good deal, btw, this smoker is worth its money. It's the one thing my husband will happily clean! :D
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well today is D-day folks! no more juices running, smoker not yet arrived (no wonder in this weather), so off to soak joint as per instructions and then having roll and bacon (unsmoked :() this time round
will report back in due course.
is it wrong to be this excited I wonder????? :-\
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Oh no, if you're not salivating yet there's something wrong! ;D
We don't do this, but some people blanch the bacon before frying even when it's been soaked - it all depends on how used you are to the stronger taste and, I suppose, whether you're having it plain in rolls, mixing it with cabbage, or any of the other hundreds of possibilities. Like I said, we don't, though I remember doing it once when we first made bacon and our taste buttons were still in the supermarket-stage. ;)
Our favourite could-eat-every-night meal is bits of crunchy salty fatty lardons in mashed potatoes :yum: :yum: :yum:
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well i think i must have done it wrong cos it was all a bit disappointing!
soaked it for the 2 separate hours in cold water and then cut a slice off for hubby to taste (still planning to smoke the rest but was impatient!).
he said it was really salty and also 'chewy' - we call it chugh (not sure how you'd spell that!)
anyone tell me where I've gone wrong please? :(
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I used Hugh Fearnleys salt cure which has a lt more sugar in tthan I expected, and in comparison with other recipes affects the overall saltiness of the baon. Have never had to soak before cooking. Sometimes, I guess it can be a bt hit and miss. Sorry you were disappointed with yours! :'(
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:)did you hang your bacon to dry ? i follow the same method as most of you but after washing the salted bacon i then hang in muslin bags for a few days 3 - 5 in a cool/cold room or shed until the bacon is firm then slice.
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is anyone else's a bit too chewy though? like eating the soles of your shoes?????
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Buy some really cheap supermarket belly to practice on. Cut it into smaller pieces. Try experimenting with the recipe a different ratio salt/sugar on each piece. Try storing for just 3 days. Soak each piece well, chill slice and try then adjust the recipe that is most to your taste. I ruined a lot of bacon before I found mine.
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Just finished ours, following your recipe!
bloomin perfect! salty, but not too salty - much better than our previous efforts - that soaking in fresh water at the end is the key I think!
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yet another daft question - sorry folks!
got the tealights
got some wood chips
lit the tea lights under the rack of the smoker
scattered some of the wood chips in the pan
put the bacon on the top rack
have left it for ages and ages and ages and NO SMOKE!!!!
should i have soaked the chips or something?
want to cry now...tell me it all gets easier p-u-l-e-e-z-e!! :'(
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Don't worry, we've been there, too, I know how you feel! Despite all the instructions we'd had when we started, we still had to learn to see when the meat was ready.
I had always read about "making your own bacon", and the newspapers & books & websites all claimed it would be oh-so-fantastic, so I was really disappointed that mine was so salty, and chewy. I felt a bit betrayed by those writers. :'(
I then googled "bacon too salty", only to find that more people have bacon that's too salty the first time around, than that there are people whose bacon is perfect straight away!
Being used to bland shop-bought bacon probably has a lot to do with it as well, but we had just cured it for too long, I suspect. It's because we were scared of food poisoning, and because knowing when meat is ready is something you kind of feel and suspect, so at first we were still learning - and getting it wrong :(. Sometimes the x-grams per kilo doesn't quite work out, the shape of the meat is different, its fat distribution is different, the moisture content is different...
We found that shop bought (organic!) meat leached much more fluid than ours does, too, which made things a bit confusing when we got our own meat.
But from our third batch onwards it all went super and we never touch the commercial stuff anymore!
Did you refresh the water between the first and second hour of soaking? Proper bacon will always be saltier than shop-bacon (it's a preserved meat, after all, meant to last for ages) but it shouldn't be inedible. Even if it is dreadfully salty, you can always blanch it before frying, so it's not lost!
Some salts taste harsher than others, as well.
Was it a slice or a chunk? Chunks will be chewier than slices as any chunk of dried pork would be. We're now using a professional slicer which cuts 1mm slices - always very crispy!!
And was it belly or loin? We used loin once, but that was much drier than belly (dissapppointment n# 2. Dissappointment n#3 was that our first smoked bacon had been smoked too much ::)).
Do you mean cold smoking or hot smoking?
It took me quite some time to light the cold smoker, but once the wooddust (not chips) is smoking, it does keep on going for the full 10 or so hours even, to our great surprise, when it's freezing outside.
The hot smoker is done by hubby (men & barbeques, hey ::)) and he soaks the woodchips which go in a bowl over the hot barbeque coals. I've never done the actual preparations for that, I'm just allowed to read the thermometer on top! ;D Hubby keeps hot coals in a separate little bucket bbq ready, in case the heat in the smoker goes down. It's a fine art, he says... I just think he likes poking in fires... ;)
Don't give up on it! Just slice this batch as fine as you can and blanch it before frying. :yum: Pretty soon you'll learn to judge the readiness of the meat and be a bacon connoisseur supreme! :yum: :yum: :yum:
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Eve, i love you!
i am trying to do cold smoking but how do get it started? do i put the tea light in the actual wood or underneath?
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:D
Once it starts going right, you kind of forget those first few tries when you thought "what on earth is the fuss all about?". Sorry about that, I should have remembered! I guess that after eating all that smoked bacon, my brain is perpetually clogged by a haze of smoke! ;)
Are you using the big bullet smoker for hot smoking, or are you putting one of those little square-spiralled-metal-wire-cold-smoke-thingies (hereafter referred to as "Thingie" :D) inside the bullet smoker to do cold smoking?
This is the Thingie I got a few weeks ago, it works a treat: http://www.macsbbq.co.uk/ColdSmoking.html (http://www.macsbbq.co.uk/ColdSmoking.html)
The Thingie is put in the bottom of the hot smoker and the meat on a rack at the top, with tin foil over a rack somewhere in the middle so that the fat that drips off the bacon doesn't end up in the Thingie. To light the Thingie, I leave the tealight in that starting corner for several minutes, as it doesn't quite catch in 30 seconds as the instructions say! (Mind you, it was -3C when I was trying it ;D). Just leave it on overnight or all day, once it's on it'll keep on going really well. Presumably a cigarette lighter or long match will work as well. I tend to keep the air vents of the bullet smoker closed when cold smoking, it's not exactly going to overheat in this weather! :D
If you're using the big bullet smoker for hot smoking, then... uuuhhh...
- it's hot coals at the bottom as with an ordinary barbeque (I think, I've never been allowed to light one! I know my place... ;) Luckily I wear the pants in everything else around here ;D ;D ;D)
- then soaked woodchips on top of the hot coals (don't think they went in a bit of tin foil, but I'll check with the master-poker himself tonight)
- a bowl of water on another rack above the smoking woodchips (I supposed that's to stop if from going too dry?)
- and again the meat on a rack at the top.
We have one of those cheap plasticky meat thermometers, and when hot smoking the temperature in the meat needs to achieve 60C - but don't worry if it's less as you won't be keeping it for 6 months anyway, plus it's already been cured with salt so safe to eat. Our bacon was very smokey the first time around as I had insisted there was as much smoke as possible ::)
Put the fattiest side of the bacon upwards, it'll moisten the meat underneath as it melts a bit.
I'll ask hubby tonight when he comes in if I've got this hot-smoking right. We'll be smoking bacon again ourselves but not until next week, but will take pictures then. Though by that time you've probably got it down to a T!
Enjoy! :wave:
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He Who Knows has been questioned about hot smoking, and duly provided the answers:
- hot coals at the bottom, just like a barbeque
- soaked woodchips on a thin single layer of tin foil on top of the hot coals
- a bowl of water to stop the smoker from getting too hot (I stand corrected ;D), placed on a rack a bit higher than the woodchips
- the meat at the top (level with the bottom edge of the lid is easiest, so that when you take the lid off you can easily put the meat thermometer in or take the meat off the rack when it's finished (rather than having to start fishing somewhere in the middle of the smoker - our smoking sessions invariable finish when it's pitch dark outside!)
- some more hot coals kept aside in case the temperature drops too much.
And once the thermometer at the top stopped working, but it only needed cleaning. ;)
Good luck!
:wave:
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well i tried to do cold smoking but i suspect it was hot smoked in the end! was out most of the day and when i got back everything had gone out but there was a lovely smokey smell in the thing and the meat itself smelt smoked. Having carbonara for tea tonight so will see what it tastes like - looks yummy i have to say!
i am keen to know the difference between hot -v- cold smoking. not in terms of how it's done cos i understand that but when you would use which one.
anyone know?
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hot smoking you can eat after without additional cooking IE chicken ham and bacon will be cold smoked
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One prized product here is very, very thinly sliced smoked bacon eaten cold/uncooked.
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You mean all those little slices that come off the slicer when you're first trying to figure out how it works and how thinly it will slice? Ate the lot raw, we did! :yum:
And wasn't it nice that it took so long to get the thickness right... ;)
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:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D
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:yum: there's another slab curing in the fridge as we speak :yum:
I coated it with salt and sugar again on day 3 of curing, and this second coating seems to draw more liquid out and do so much more quickly than the first coating. So we use more salt and yet... the salty taste doesn't get significantly worse. ???
Hot smoking is to 65C, btw, not 65F as I put it before. :-[ Not that it matters as the bacon has already been cured by the salt. Plus we now cold-smoke it as standard anyway ;)
:love: :pig: :love: :pig: :love: :pig: :love: :pig: :love: :pig: :love:
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eve, i want to do a ham next. you got any pearls of wisdom for me on that one please??? :-*
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Buy salt in bulk! ;D ;D
Will it be a cooked ham or air dried ham? For cooked hams, see Hilarysmum's posting a page or so down. :yum:
For air dried hams, buy a few kilo's of salt - we use ordinary Saxo or Waitrose's own brand. Put a thick coating all over - you need 2 people for that, one to lift the leg up in all sorts of ways whilst the other empties tub after tub of salt all into every nook and cranny. Curing takes 1 day (or more) for each 1/2kg of meat, so easily 2 weeks for a whole leg. If it's still squashy, keep on curing it until firm enough and no more moisture leaches out.
If you put the box that houses the meat at an angle, the juices run into a corner rather than staying underneath the meat - we just put one side of the box on hubby's big boots, they give the perfect angle! :D
Once it's cured, you rinse off all the salt, pat the whole thing dry, and leave it to air dry. For this actual air drying, there are 2 options:
1) put it in muslin and let it dry for 6+ months somewhere cool, in which case there will be harmless dry mould growing all over it, which stays on there until you scrape some off when you want to eat a bit of ham
2) put pork fat all over the exposed meat (in which case you won't get the mould covering), then pepper on the fat (to keep bugs off) and again in a muslin ('cause a leg covered in cloth is easier to handle than one covered in lard, and we're paranoid).
The fat stops the skin from drying out and hardening - if the skin dries out, the moisture from inside can't escape anymore and the meat will rot inside.
We used whole pepper but I suppose ground pepper would have been more economical. ::)
As for the muslin / cheese cloth: cheap white cotton pillow cases from the supermarket are the perfect size. ;D
Tie some string around the trotter bit where the meat hook is inserted so that nothing can go inside the pillow case (spiders in the loft! :o). The meat hook came from our butcher, and the ham was hanging from an old clothing rail. 8)
Last year we used a whole 8kg leg which took a few weeks to cure. We've used smaller pieces of meat since, but we'll try a whole leg again next time. Only, the next whole leg will be without the bone still in there at the top, as we don't have one of those special wooden holders to set it into for easy slicing (as they have in the deli's). After 5 months or so we tasted it, and ended up taking the whole thing apart in large pieces because of the slicing issue, with some eaten straight away and the rest put back to continue drying. The flavour changes between months 5 and 10+.
As for the weight that needs to go on top of the meat to push the juices out during curing, we didn't have enough tins! :D Plus it was the biggest plastic box we could buy but still not quite big enough, so the leg was sitting at an angle and the tins rolled off. So I confiscated hubby's drill, wrapped it in tea towels and lots of cling film, and used that as a weight. Got some funny looks from the Amazon delivery guy ;)
That whole leg was started last year October and although it tastes really good, it's not really dry despite spending all summer outside... But even though it's not bone dry, it hasn't rotted either, I keep on being amazed at the power of salt! :o
I'm thinking of putting dried herbs in both the salt cure and the lard next time...
:yum: :pig: :yum:
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as ever, thanks eve!
so my idea of salting/curing it and having it for xmas dinner might not be terribly practical then!?!?!?!?
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Christmas 2011 it will be perfect ;)
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LOL!
think i will do the big one like that and do the smaller gigot as per your details hilarysmum - might make it for new year?
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A smallish one would definitely be ok for new year if you do it in next couple of days.
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on the case, its out the freezer and will start it tomorrow -as per your post!!
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so just let me check i'll be doing the right thing.
the smaller piece (gigot) i am going to immerse in boiled and chilled salt & sugar added water.
how long for? when will i know it's done?
then once it's done, i will just pop in water, bring to boil, chuck out water and do same agan - this time till it's cooked?
is that all?
(the huge leg wont be defrosted yet so will come back with other questions about that one no doubt!!!)
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I would just like to say to Eve et al.........................I was flicking through these topics as I hate the Apprentice ::) and I am GOBSMACKED at it being such a great thread. You guys are so knowledgable and able to give great advice. Nice one!
Seriously, I'm thinking of going out and buying some baby pigs .................. :D :D
Got the taste for a bacon sarnie by the way too ;D
ian
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knightquest go for it.
egglady, probably a week certainly no more than 10 days. Probably a good idea to soak it in clean water for a day before cooking, when cooking test /taste the water when ham comes to the boil, if its salty change water. Remembner to weigh before brining and write down cooking times etc. so that you can adjust the recipe for the bigger one.
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Thankyou, Knightquest, and you're very welcome!
Pigs are soooo addictive, so we end up wanting to tell everyone about them! I'm sure our friends are really
pleased these forums exists, so that we have another outlet for all our enthusiasm! ;D
4.8kg of salami went up in the loft last night :yum:
:wave:
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ian, this is a brilliant thread. Eve and Hilarymum have taken me from complete eejit to reasonably confident bacon and ham producer! Obviously I've stopped off at babbling fool, daft lassie, complete beginner and total moron along the way but the journey (for me at least) has only been possible with the invaluable help and support from these two fan-bloody-tastic people!
i will probably never meet either of them but they have a special place in my Hall of Thanks....... :bouquet: :bouquet:
and ian - get those pigs booked for next year! i've just come back up from feeding mine and giving them both a wee scratch - there is nothing better!
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Thank you thats a lovely thing to say. After today's experience I need my confidence boosting.
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Thank you thats a lovely thing to say. After today's experience I need my confidence boosting.
ohn no that doesnt soind good - whats happened?
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A little too much piggy help with the loading of the two for pork.
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Thankyou so much, egglady, very kind of you!
But I'm a in the total beginner category for quite a few others things! ;D ;D
Have fun with the hams and bacon, and if anyone knows a way to get a pepper crust around salami (one that you don't take off when you remove the casings when slicing) please enlighten me! :yum:
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For air dried hams, buy a few kilo's of salt - we use ordinary Saxo or Waitrose's own brand. Put a thick coating all over - you need 2 people for that, one to lift the leg up in all sorts of ways whilst the other empties tub after tub of salt all into every nook and cranny. Curing takes 1 day (or more) for each 1/2kg of meat, so easily 2 weeks for a whole leg. If it's still squashy, keep on curing it until firm enough and no more moisture leaches out.
If you put the box that houses the meat at an angle, the juices run into a corner rather than staying underneath the meat - we just put one side of the box on hubby's big boots, they give the perfect angle! :D
Once it's cured, you rinse off all the salt, pat the whole thing dry, and leave it to air dry. For this actual air drying, there are 2 options:
1) put it in muslin and let it dry for 6+ months somewhere cool, in which case there will be harmless dry mould growing all over it, which stays on there until you scrape some off when you want to eat a bit of ham
2) put pork fat all over the exposed meat (in which case you won't get the mould covering), then pepper on the fat (to keep bugs off) and again in a muslin ('cause a leg covered in cloth is easier to handle than one covered in lard, and we're paranoid).
The fat stops the skin from drying out and hardening - if the skin dries out, the moisture from inside can't escape anymore and the meat will rot inside.
We used whole pepper but I suppose ground pepper would have been more economical. ::)
As for the muslin / cheese cloth: cheap white cotton pillow cases from the supermarket are the perfect size. ;D
Tie some string around the trotter bit where the meat hook is inserted so that nothing can go inside the pillow case (spiders in the loft! :o). The meat hook came from our butcher, and the ham was hanging from an old clothing rail. 8)
Last year we used a whole 8kg leg which took a few weeks to cure. We've used smaller pieces of meat since, but we'll try a whole leg again next time. Only, the next whole leg will be without the bone still in there at the top, as we don't have one of those special wooden holders to set it into for easy slicing (as they have in the deli's). After 5 months or so we tasted it, and ended up taking the whole thing apart in large pieces because of the slicing issue, with some eaten straight away and the rest put back to continue drying. The flavour changes between months 5 and 10+.
As for the weight that needs to go on top of the meat to push the juices out during curing, we didn't have enough tins! :D Plus it was the biggest plastic box we could buy but still not quite big enough, so the leg was sitting at an angle and the tins rolled off.
:yum: :pig: :yum:
Eve/Hilarysmum, i have no idea what part we are now curing as the label fell off but it is nearly 3 kg. has a lot of fat on it so although we thought it was a leg, i'm now thinking that it is maybe back or belly! can we still make it into air dried ham? or might it be aleg with the bone taken out?
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i have no idea what part we are now curing as the label fell off
;D ;D What shape is it, round or flat and square-ish? Have you got a picture?
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the butcher had it rolled up and tied so cant really say for sure. we've untied it but not really sure what shape it is. can take photo tomorrow
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Ah the difficulty if its flat when laid out its either loin or belly. Does it have teats or was it skinned? If teats its belly.
If the butcher tunnel boned the leg then it will not flatten out when untied. Same with shoulder. Either of w hich make great ham. Never used belly or loin as ham only as bacon. I would imagine it would be ok, just a different shape?
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... difference between hot -v- cold smoking ... when you would use which one
We found the answer... big cured slab of bacon ready in the fridge but no barbeque coals left, so hubby drives around petrol stations and B&Q yesterday but can't find anything other than no-smoke coals (clearly nobody but us uses the barbeque over Christmas ;) ).
Tried the no-smoke coals but they stink dreadfully, so the coals were taken out of the smoker again and were replaced with the the cold-smoke thingie. We haven't had it for long, previously it had only been used for ham so this was the first cold smoking session for bacon.
Now we now what to choose for bacon!
Hot smoked bacon looks, well, divine! It has brown edges and looks to die for (drool drool drool).
Cold smoked bacon looks... just like it did when it went in the smoker so many hours before - raw!
The cold smoker does keep on smoking for ages even in freezing weather and you don't need to bother checking temperatures, so in that respect it works really well. And the bacon smells fine (haven't tasted it yet), but... we very much prefer the look of hot smoked bacon! :yum: :yum: :yum:
So we've learnt our lesson: in summer, buy enough normal barbeque coals to keep you going through winter! :D
Wish I could upload a picture...
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STOP PRESS!
We've learnt another lesson: never put no-smoke coals in your smoker! :(
We just fried some lardons of the cold smoked bacon and it's not nice, it tastes like the chemical on those stinking no-smoke coals - even though we took those out of the smoker when we notice the smell and put apple wood dust in instead. :( :(
So we're going to soak the bacon again to see if we can get that chemical taste back out (never soaked something twice before...), then try and find proper coals tomorrow so that we can hot smoke it after all and hopefully rectify the problem. We'll probably have to clean the inside of the smoker first to get rid of that horrible chemical taste...
Sigh... We were going to use that bacon in a Christmas brunch quiche. Might try smoking it in the oven with the back door open...
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is it a home made smoker is it pale brown
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Hi Lilian, I just modified the message above...
It's a black Kingford Bullet, works a treat both as a barbeque and as a smoker (hot as well as cold). But clearly using no-smoke coals (even though it was only for a very short time and before the meat went in) was a BIIIIG mistake! :(
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Christmas homicide only narrowly averted!
After He Who Should Know went on and on about how there are no more barbeque coals to be found anywhere in the house / garage / garden, he gave me a look as if to say "if you really must but don't expect to find anything" when I said I'd go and look in the garage just in case.
In the garage, I found... a bag of bbq brickettes!
HALLELUJAH!
It's a good thing he's the most wonderful man in the world because he nearly got the bag thrown at this head!
The chemical-taste bacon is soaking, we'll pat it dry and then it's going for a hot smoke this afternoon, no time to let it dry for a few days. That quiche might even make it to the brunch after all!
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Wonderful, so true .... still laughing.
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It worked! Resoaking and resmoking and the chemical taste is gone!
Usually we go on holiday over Christmas - think we'll have to go away again next year as this is just too stressful!
;D
Happy Christmas :wave:
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And a wonderful new year to you Eve
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You too, HilarysMum, have a great 2011! :wave:
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ladies, a fab hogmanay to you both and everyone else of course!
laura
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folks, i just thought i would share this...
we've been clearing out our outbuilding (the one where the 'ham' has been hanging in a pillowcase since November 2010)...hubby cut it down and once we got over the fact that it didnt in fact smell rancid (even with all the mould on it!!), we sliced it up, grilled some of it and popped it on a freshly baked roll...
OH MY WORD!!!! :-* :-* :-*
suffice it to say that we won't ever be buying shop bought bacon again!!!!!
(tried to convince hubby to try some raw but he point blank refused...)
now in little bags to go back in the freezer to be enjoyed during the rest of this year :) :) :)
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sounds gorgeous. Raw bacon thinly sliced bacon is rolled and served as an hors douvres deuvre (and even living in France I cant spell this one sorry)
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Mmmmm, sounds great, we've tasted plenty of it raw and it's divine! :yum: Not as an hors d'oeuvre, mind, just because we had no patience or self control! :D
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;D ;D ;D I'm salivating