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Author Topic: Making bacon!  (Read 27815 times)

Eve

  • Joined Jul 2010
Re: Making bacon!
« Reply #15 on: December 01, 2010, 05:46:02 pm »
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!




Hilarysmum

  • Joined Oct 2007
Re: Making bacon!
« Reply #16 on: December 01, 2010, 06:13:05 pm »
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.

Hilarysmum

  • Joined Oct 2007
Re: Making bacon!
« Reply #17 on: December 01, 2010, 06:15:18 pm »
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.

egglady

  • Joined Jun 2009
Re: Making bacon!
« Reply #18 on: December 01, 2010, 06:54:12 pm »
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?

Eve

  • Joined Jul 2010
Re: Making bacon!
« Reply #19 on: December 01, 2010, 07:44:02 pm »
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:

sarha

  • Joined Jun 2010
  • East Sussex
Re: Making bacon!
« Reply #20 on: December 01, 2010, 08:25:42 pm »
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
Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do, than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines; sail away from the safe harbour; catch the trade winds in your sails. -  Mark Twain

Eve

  • Joined Jul 2010
Re: Making bacon!
« Reply #21 on: December 01, 2010, 08:41:30 pm »
Quote
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:


egglady

  • Joined Jun 2009
Re: Making bacon!
« Reply #22 on: December 01, 2010, 08:48:30 pm »

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!

sarha

  • Joined Jun 2010
  • East Sussex
Re: Making bacon!
« Reply #23 on: December 01, 2010, 08:48:56 pm »
Quote
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:)


Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do, than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines; sail away from the safe harbour; catch the trade winds in your sails. -  Mark Twain

sarha

  • Joined Jun 2010
  • East Sussex
Re: Making bacon!
« Reply #24 on: December 01, 2010, 08:51:15 pm »

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!!!
Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do, than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines; sail away from the safe harbour; catch the trade winds in your sails. -  Mark Twain

egglady

  • Joined Jun 2009
Re: Making bacon!
« Reply #25 on: December 01, 2010, 08:56:11 pm »
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!!!

OhLaLa

  • Joined Sep 2010
Re: Making bacon!
« Reply #26 on: December 02, 2010, 09:25:56 am »
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?

egglady

  • Joined Jun 2009
Re: Making bacon!
« Reply #27 on: December 02, 2010, 01:35:49 pm »
found it for £79 and thought seeing eve bought hers a few years ago that that was an ok price.

Eve

  • Joined Jul 2010
Re: Making bacon!
« Reply #28 on: December 02, 2010, 06:17:47 pm »
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


egglady

  • Joined Jun 2009
Re: Making bacon!
« Reply #29 on: December 07, 2010, 08:41:54 am »
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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