[manian]

just got our bacon back
1st time of having bacon and the butcher has done the girls proud, very tasty
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.204343226349198.44492.100003205651558&type=1#!/media/set/?set=a.204343226349198.44492.100003205651558&type=1&notif_t=photo_album_comment

[nelson]

  Can taste that bacon - what breed where you girls?

[manian]

a mixture of GOS, large white and pietrien
Mx

[MAK]

mmmm - great stuff.
My OH has yet to taste ours as she been with her daughter for 3 weeks waiting on a baby -it  was our first cure and I luv it -
Do you find that you are enjoying it more rather than serving it up with all the trimmings or extras. Simple bacon and egg for me - no sauce- no beans etc  just want to enjoy the taste of the bacon.

[nelson]

Morning

Just fed the pigs and about to tuck into a bacon and egg sandwich - it is going to me my last for a while - I am going to cut back ....well until tomorrow 

We have some GOS and Berkshire bacon at the moment. Looking forward to seeing what our Berkshire/Tam will produce.

No sauce for us either

[suziequeue]

just got our bacon back
1st time of having bacon and the butcher has done the girls proud, very tasty

Does your butcher do your bacon for you? How much does he/she charge for making it?

[manian]

Does your butcher do your bacon for you? How much does he/she charge for making it?

he charges £1.20 a kilo on top of the kill/cut charges
its dry cured and vaccum packed, with weights

[Sylvia]

The abbatoir I go to charges me £8 for  a middle of bacon. Can't remember the weight but it was lovely. Have also tried Lill's recipe

[lill]

Sylvia, glad to be of assistace 

[HappyHippy]

Looking forward to seeing what our Berkshire/Tam will produce.

I know they say Berkshires are great pork pigs, we got the loins from ours cured and it was FANTASTIC 
Home grown's always best 

[MAK]

Looking at the costs ( above) the the cost of keeping our pigs then I guess the bacon should be good. I never used to buy bacon in the UK so I have no idea how much a very good bacon ( say from waitrose butcher dept or a traditional butcher) would cost. We can't buy it here.
Any ideas?
Its just that the OH is trying to calculate how much our pork is worth. She has collected local prices of the different cuts and she has recorded the cut weights of of all we butchered and curred, We killed at home and I butchered and - chris made the sausages,bacon and hams - so no cost there.
Maybe I'll post the breakdown when she finishes her sums.

[manian]

our bacon had the butchers prices on it
£8.50/kilo
not sure if that is for his ordinary or free range etc

[redborneschoolfarm]

Have you ever tried making your own bacon. Once you start it gets addictive plus you can really experiment with teh flavours. If its of any interest to you we posted a blog of our first attempt at curing and smoking our own its a sort of mini how to guide its at http://redbornefarm.blogspot.com

[suziequeue]

We make our own bacon using a dry cure which we get from the butcher as it's a cure I particularly like and you can only get it in bulk (SOOOOOO typical that that's the one I want  ) and we don't make enough to justify a big tub.

I think I need to break with that and make my own dry cure........ but where do I get that smokey flavour from???

We vac pack it and freeze it and it's GREAT

[Dan]

Have you ever tried making your own bacon. Once you start it gets addictive plus you can really experiment with teh flavours. If its of any interest to you we posted a blog of our first attempt at curing and smoking our own its a sort of mini how to guide its at http://redbornefarm.blogspot.com

There's a guide to making bacon on TAS:

http://www.accidentalsmallholder.net/food/food-processing/making-bacon/

It covers the basics and needs to be extended to include smoking (found our old Bradley smoke generator today in the workshop!).

but where do I get that smokey flavour from???

Cold smoking!