Cooking with Jonny69: Home cured bacon

Day off today: breakfast time :D

Carve three thick slices of home cured bacon:

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Butter two thick slices of bread, fresh from the bakery:

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Fry the bacon with a free range egg, runny yolk and slightly crisp bottom:

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Serve immediately with a lightly frothed latte, straight from the espresso machine:

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Add ketchup or brown sauce to taste. I'm having mine virgin today :cool:

Edit: looks like the bandwidth is killed on the original pics, they should be back up soon...
 
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Made some back bacon on the last batch.

Used 1/2 a boned out loin. Removed the skin and 90% of the fat to keep Claire happy.

3 days of rub and drain and 2 more of letting it just sit with the remaining rub on before washing and freezing for 2 1/2 hours.

Sliced the whole lot using my new meat slicer from a highstreet catalog shop...

Cookworks Food Slicer.422/8211 £29.89


Froze the whole lot down in packs of 6 rashers and it made 10 packs at about 1.20 a pack
 
Jonny69 said:
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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In the end I just used rock salt which I crushed in my pestle and mortar.

Decided to give cured salmon a go. Got two salmon fillets, put in a bag with salt, sugar and paprika. Put the bags in a dish in the fridge with a couple of cans on to compress the salmon and help get the water out. Left it for a day, wanted to drain the water away but found that it was too much a part of the salt mix to drain so I decided to scrape it of and put fresh mixture on.

After two days (I started it friday evening and ate it sunday lunchtime) I scraped everything off, washed it thoroughly andpatted it dry, then using my lovely ham knife (long, very thin and very sharp) I finely sliced it.

The outer was a little too dry and chewyish, (think I used too much salt for the amount of salmon I had), the inner however was perfect, had a lovely flavour and great texture, just like smoked salmon!

Had it with bagels and cream cheese and was mightily impressed with it! Next time I do it I'll take some pics!

Valve
 
Wicksta said:
Interesting slicer The_blue, one thing putting me off trying it was cutting the rashers. Does the pork fit in the slicer ok? Have you got any rasher pics?
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No sorry, it's all in the freezer.

We took some to a friends and they didn't belive i'd sliced it at home as it just looks like shop bought. Slices can be set to whatever thickness you like.

I was a little concerned by the speed of the blade, its quite slow compared to comercial ones and made a poor job on fresh meat. The tempering (part freezing) process turned this around and the blade now makes a fantastic job! I've even used it to slice silverside for the Jerky recipie i posted on here.
 
The_blue said:
I was a little concerned by the speed of the blade, its quite slow compared to comercial ones and made a poor job on fresh meat. The tempering (part freezing) process turned this around and the blade now makes a fantastic job! I've even used it to slice silverside for the Jerky recipie i posted on here.
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I need one of these slicers, might nip over the road later this week on payday as we have one of those shops opposite the office. :)
 
Jonny69 said:
The bacon is quite dry on the outside initially but after a few days it evens out. Maybe your salmon needed to sit and mature for a bit?
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Hmmm, maybe I'll have to try it again and see what happens with it.

Want to give the bacon a go soon too.

If only I had more space to do thiese things!
 
I've got my own one of these on the go now.
I used a joint of pork loin to make back bacon, a little more expensive but I thought I'd try it using this and report back.

I think the difficulty will be to make sure the eye is cured all the way through without leaving the other bits overdone and too salty.
I've got more curing mixture on that bit, so we'll see what happens.

My mixture is a combination salt, sugar, white pepper, mace, juniper berries and a few caraway seeds.
 
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I may have a breakthrough here. I have done a short cure and the saltyness is gone, so as long as it can last the two weeks or so it takes me to eat it she'll be a good'un.

Two rubs only.

I also had a cunning plan to make cutting the meat easier, cut across the meat instead of along it. Duh.

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Less liquid came out in the cure because of the shorter time but still no shrinkage in the pan and no white slime, which begs the question... what the hell do the supermarkets do to it?
 
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Jonny69 said:
Less liquid came out in the cure because of the shorter time but still no shrinkage in the pan and no white slime, which begs the question... what the hell do the supermarkets do to it?
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They add salt and water, add a bit of weight. Therefore increase price. ;) I get my bacon from a local farm, put the supermarket stuff to shame. :D
 
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