ottawa foodies

I'm going in! Going to try my hand at making bacon and would like to hear from those in the know. Brining or nitrates? Readycure? Where can you get pink salt? Going to smoke it with apple on the Egg but I need some guidelines on internal temp, etc. All advice greatfully accepted.

I got my pink salt in Navan at Lavernge Western Beef. I also use maple syrup in my brine as I follow the recipe in Michael Rohlman's book " Charcuterie".

3 bacon'esque rules i live by...

1. More is more. Buy it thick or buy a slab from your butcher and cut it yourself;

2. Respect the bacon. Too much heat in the pan not your friend and burned bacon is only a reminder of the bacon that could have been;

3. More is more part deux. There is no such thing as too much bacon. There is only 'how much do we have available?'.

i posted a pictorial awhile back using a recipe tweaked from the book Charcuterie. see link below.

ottawafoodies.com

for the record i would NOT use Readycure as it is not a 1 for 1 substitute for Instacure (or Cure #1/prague powder as it is sometimes referred to in recipes).

I found some 250 g bags of Altura pink salt at the Mid-east Food Center at Belfast/St. Laurent. It's from the Andes Mts in Bolivia.

Readycure is fine to use as long as you convert it. I won first place in Spring 2011 in a bacon contest in Halifax with bacon made with it. 11 entrants, 4 or 5 of them were professional chefs

conversion details on my blog here urbanhippy.ca/making/bacon

As for nitrates - I'm still making it both ways and don't notice a huge difference between them. Brining - have not done that in a long time but might do it again soon for kicks and giggles. My award winning bacon was dry cured as per the method monty links to above. That's the same method I use now and the same basic cure though I jazz it up with spices, onions and garlic. And as someone mentioned above, maple syrup. I replace half the brown sugar with maple syrup

Not sure whether I ever posted this or not ... I sent the bacon down in regular mail on February so I guess it stayed frozen more or less in the back of the canada post truck :-) And they mailed me my trophy

Closeup

so why do you guys add nitrates when making bacon at home? your not selling the stuff commercially.

Dry cure is the way to go...it draws liquid out anyways and sort of brines it in a way i guess.

Zym! Haha, you sent it in regular mail?!?! 2 days on the truck. Was it in a cooler? That's hilarious. FedEx overnight, not really funny, but regular mail! hahaha

Either way, congrats

yeah that's my point all along Eastcoast.chef - there really is no need for it. I still have not done a side by side taste test but you sure can make great bacon without it. I use none, full amount, half amount, third amount ... all makes great bacon. The important part is curing it right (screwed up my last batch not doing that)

When making bacon you use nitrite. Nitrate breaks down into nitrite over time and is not for short cure products. As to why Nitrite....flavor mostly and also preserves the meat looking color aka red/pink.

This is the greatest thread ever.

A stumble at the first hurdle as I could not find Instacure at either Nicastro's or the Sausage Kitchen. Any tips?

I see OSM's greatest thread ever, and I'll raise it with a greatest trophy ever, Zym.

Readycure is fine. The judges in Halifax seem to agree on this.

About nitrate/nitrite...

While it certainly has some impact on color and taste, an important reason to use it would be because it prevents botulism, which is rare but deadly. Cold also prevents it (which is why nitrate-free bacon is usually sold frozen), but if your home-cured meat is going to stay at room temperature for a while, it's risky to not use that preservative.

And, by the way, even if you cook the meat very well before eating it, heat does not destroy the botulinum toxin.

Heat most definitely destroys the toxin - just not the spores

en.wikipedia.org

So if you plan to eat your bacon raw, definitely use nitrite

I've always wondered, what did people use to make bacon say, 100 years ago, before there was Readycure or the like? Was there ever a time when folks just used salt and the smoking process to preserve the bacon?

I would not consider bacon that you get in the store a truly cured meat requiring nitrite. It is used for flavoring for the most part. Since it is stored in a refrigerated mechanism and cooked, it does not need curing. I have some friends who use just salt for curing meats and that is what was historically done, but not the safest.

The risk just makes the bacon taste better.

So nitrate-free bacon is the fugu of charcuterie? Interesting concept, it explains a lot ;-)

Thanks for the correction, indeed it's just the spores that survive, and those shouldn't affect you unless they touch a wound. Handling the contaminated food before cooking it would be pretty dangerous though, considering how small the lethal dose is for that crazy neurotoxin.

I admit to being scared of that one, so I've kept my meat curing experiments so far to those that can be done entirely in the fridge, or those that give a result too dry and salty for bacteria. So I haven't dared to make bacon yet :-/

@OSM - I'M EATING BACON AND I'M LIVING ON THE EDGE! Mmmmmm. Bathtub bacon.

bacon is cured in the fridge, it's not hung or anything like that. the only time the bacon would not be in the fridge is when it is in the smoker...and even then it's not in there for that long, maybe an hour or so is all you need. i see the need for nitrites if you are doing a very long smoke on the belly....but otherwise. I have never used nitrites/nitrates for bacon. do you honestly care that the meat is nice and pink/red when raw.....it's not going to look that way once it is cooked.

Also use nitrites if you want to do a really long cure longer than a week.

But yeah, I'm slightly colour blind so I don't even see the pink meat anyway :-)

Bacon as money..

www.foodbeat.com

No cash, no cards, just bartering in bacon....

How long should I plan for the smoking and cooking on the Egg?

I've only done it once on the egg - but 3 hours was about right in my case, as low as you can keep it hopefully 200F or even a bit lower.

Bacon turned out great if a bit salty. I did soak it for two hours but I guess I'll try a little longer next time. I ended up doing 2 portions of Krusy pork side for just under three hours on the Egg at about 195F. I ended up with an internal temp of about 138F.

Thanks for all the advice!

Bacon, avocado,heirloom tomato wrap. Awesome!

On the weekend a friend offered to take a look at an issue involving my car, so I paid him in bacon.

I just heard back from him with a verdict - am pretty pleased :-)

"Good friggin christ!!! Do you sell this stuff? There are no words to truly describe how good it tastes."

He's probably wishing that he sabotaged your car!

i don't understand the thumbs down for that. must of been a car mechanic or something