Cooking with Jonny69: Home cured bacon

I like mushroom sauce, but it's very liquid. Will have to try making my own at some point, which resembles more of a sauce.

Going to give this a try in a couple of weeks. Going to get some people round and have burgers and dvd.
 
Matblack said:
Today was day 3 and still quite a lot of juice coming off when I did the final rub just now, tomorrow it comes out of the rub and will be left for a day.

I am considering making a smoker, it is possible to make a cold smoker without the tubing and very cheaply using (of all things) a soldering iron.

MB
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Check out here: http://www.smoker-cooking.com/build-a-cold-smoker.html

I think I have a plan hatching along those lines with a 16W soldering iron and a panettone tin.
 
Salt Peter/nitrates are useful for improving the preserving qualities as well as the colour of the meat. There is however growing medical evidence that nitrates cause cancer so I think there is a trend away from nitrates. In small amounts it shouldn't be different from any of those many other things that are bad for us. If you don't need nitrates I shouldn't bother. Some air dried sausages where the risks might be a little higher probably do justify their use though.
 
Just tried carving mine up, what a mission

next time I must remember to have the rind removed first and any rib bones :/

found it pretty hard to cut each slice with any kind of precision so I have a few slices and the rest is chopped into lardons which I will put in a scrambled egg

Is it normal for the bottom to go quite purple and slightly tougher?
 
I'm going to get a ham knife, I think it'll make cutting a lot easier.

Jbuk, mine didn't go purple but it did get a lot darker and firmer. Edit: what cut did you get?

Damn Sainsburys were out of pork belly so no bacon for me until Sunday :(
 
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AcidHell2 said:
Have you got an extremely sharp knife, it also helps if you partially freeze the meat to firm it up.
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I have a decently sharp knife but I tried cutting it the meat fresh, nest time I'll chill it , ta :)

Jonny69 said:
I'm going to get a ham knife, I think it'll make cutting a lot easier.

Jbuk, mine didn't go purple but it did get a lot darker and firmer.

Damn Sainsburys were out of pork belly so no bacon for me until Sunday :(
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maybe purple is the wrong colour, but its noticably darker than the skin side of the meat


tastes ok though :)
 
Just been doing some reading up on home curing of meats etc and found a post by someone who seemed a little over dramatic, saying not to use table salt as it contains horrible anti-caing agents, and that you MUST use pure salt from a health food shop.

Is this true or is it nonesense?

Also, I'm wanting to do some cured Salmon, and wondered if anyone else has tried this, and if so, what were the results like?
 
Great idea, can't wait to try this myself now.

Would sea salt or rock salt be better than table salt?

Also if you use maple syrup, do you glase the meat and salt on top?

Mmmmm bacon.

E-I
 
Well I cooked some last night and it wasn't as good as I was hoping

When cooked it looked gray in parts and the flavour wasn't there
 
JBuk said:
Well I cooked some last night and it wasn't as good as I was hoping

When cooked it looked gray in parts and the flavour wasn't there
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Not salty enough? Not sweet enough?

The colour is normal. Its the typical pork colour due to not having the colour fixing nitrates.


I've started a loin today :D Trimmed most of the fat off to keep her in doors happy :)
 
That worked OK :)

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:)

MB
 
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valve90210 said:
Just been doing some reading up on home curing of meats etc and found a post by someone who seemed a little over dramatic, saying not to use table salt as it contains horrible anti-caing agents, and that you MUST use pure salt from a health food shop.

Is this true or is it nonesense?
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Well it's true but not critical. I am using cheap table salt as I'm still experimenting and it's cheap, but the sodium levels are higher in table salt because of the anti caking agent.

Anti caking agent is a sodium based ingredient which takes up maybe 1/4 to 1/3 of the volume of table salt but doesn't add anything to the saltiness, so you have to add more table salt to something than you would do pure salt to make it taste equally salty. Because the anti caking agent in table salt is sodium based and you're using more of it, your sodium intake is increased which is no good for your heart.

In the case of curing it's the salt part that does the curing so the purer the salt the better it will be, technically.

I put a fresh bit in yesterday so I'll have nice new bacon to fry this weekend. I used a ratio of two parts salt to one and a half parts sugar and no spices to see how it comes out :)
 
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