Wow! I have been on somewhat of a hiatus as some of you may have noticed. This wasn’t by choice and believe me, I was not enjoying myself. Every once in a while, it really hits the fan, you know what I mean? A perfect storm! Well, it wasn’t really all that bad. A deadline for a release was pushed up significantly at work. That was pretty intense. One guy was on vacation only to return and find out that all his work was two weeks late! Then I get to my day off last week, all set to relax, catch up with the blogosphere and my blog, and I get sick. Why do I have to get sick on my off day? I was laid up for the entire weekend. One should get sick during the work week. I mean, isn’t that what sick days are for? Such the under used perk.

So now I have a small back log of stuff I want to share with you; those of you who are still visiting me and realize that I haven’t completely dropped off the face of the earth. One of those things in my cache is this wonderful hunk of pig belly. I realize that I am late to the party when it comes to the belly, but I have to admit, I was a bit skeptical about working in such unknown territory.



For the past few months or so, I have been drooling over posts all throughout the blogosphere sporting braised belly, fresh, home cured bacon, and even breaded and deep fried belly!

So I clicked my way to Niman Ranch. Extracted the credit card and ordered the monstrosity pictured above. Let me tell you, that came from a very large pig. Not quite a sow, but a large pig nonetheless. I just recently noticed changes at Niman Ranch and pork belly no longer seems to be offered. Oh well, there are other places online and from what I understand, local Asian markets will carry it as well. Not necessarily in that huge whole cut, but that is probably a good thing. Luckily I have a decent sized freezer.

I wondered… is home cured bacon really that much better than store bought premium bacon? I was bound to find out. Not to mention, I just like making stuff, you know? I get some quirky, probably misguided, sense of accomplishment from making my own stuff. Maybe I’ll try moonshine next. In any case… I assembled the necessary curing paraphernalia that I found online and was directed to by Ruhlman, et al, in Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing. The instructions are clear, concise, and unbelievably simple. I prepped my cure.

I then took, believe it or not, only 1/3 of that belly to prepare for curing.

For this, I didn’t think to do anything really fancy, so I prepped two cures, one for cracked pepper and the other for maple.

Into the fridge the baggies went for their 7 day slumber. Every other day, I would turn the baggies. It was really that simple. I did have some issues with the cracked pepper bacon getting crisp before burning. Nothing that a quick blanch didn’t fix, but the maple turned out to be out favorite. I used the peppered bacon in applications as lardons, blanched first and that turned out to be a win.

Stay tuned for more of my belly adventures. Hell, I have like a gazillion pounds of it left!