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Isn't that pretty? After two weeks of curing, dry aging, smoking and slicing we now have 8 pounds of pancetta and bacon. The pancetta (pictured above), was ready for slicing and cooking. Here's something we discovered: For the bacon we had considered doing an applewood smoking of the bacon. Instead we went with hickory. For that, we set up our bullet smoker (a Weber Smoky mountain is ideal, we have a Brinkman bullet smoker) to reach a temperature of 120 degrees and smoked the bacon for 2 hours. You don't want the bacon to cook during the process, so try to keep the temperature constant.
Here's where the basic principles of Gary Wiviott's Low & Slow techniques come into play. Smoking meats, like all good barbeque or charcuterie, cannot be rushed. In the case of adding smoke to pancetta to create bacon, what amount of smoke you add to the meat is determined by your own personal tastes. We just wanted enough smoke there to complement the flavor of the cure.
Curing pork belly is easy to do at home. If you decide to dive in, get creative with the other spices you add. The Spice House has a nice recipe for five-spice pork belly. Maybe you want to add paprika or maple syrup to your cure. Or use very aromatic herbs like rosemary or sage.
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Now that looks good!
Just out of curiosity, is this something that you plan on doing over and over, or did you just want to do it once to experience the process?
The guanciale experiment, coupled with a copy of Ruhlman's Charcuterie that was gathering dust on my bookshelf, awakened a beast, Ingrid. I'm planning on doing this very often, as well as trying out other cures and preparations.
Wait'll you see what's next.
I have a 4lb section of belly curing right now, I'm psyched. It's my first time doing a dry cure. Hopefully I didn't go overboard on the spices.
That looks way better than the green-tinged stuff. :)
The guanciale was a result of bad photoshopping on my part. I recommend taking a look at the chunk I gifted to Mike Gebert for a better idea of what it actually looked like.
You're right, that does look less scary :)
Looking good! To the question about doing it again... absolutely. You can make a hearty freezer stash of any of this stuff (and being mostly fat it freezes well, especially if you have a vacuum sealer) every 6 months or so and have plenty on hand. And once you've done it, making the next batch goes really quickly. It's a great resource to have on hand for cooking.
I would point out that for smoke flavor, though, you're really smoking even lower and slower than Low & Slow-- that's aimed at actually cooking a piece of meat through at around 225, and for bacon etc., I try to build a really small fire which will not go above 150. Which means I have to rebuild it every hour or so, but that's no big deal when you're probably smoking for 2-3 hours tops.
Oops, I'm a dork, you already said all that about temperature.
To help maintain the low temperature smoke (if using the bullet), place a baine marie of ice cubes above the fire so that the smoke is then cooled as it makes it's way up to the meat. If I'm not mistaken there are usually 2 racks-so if you build up with fire, ice, meat you can keep the temp low enough to not affect the texture of the meat.