It’s becoming increasingly clear to me that an annual ‘Charcuterie Day‘ marathon immediately following the annual ‘Pig Day‘ is in my future for a long, long time. Here’s why. Bacon. Beyond bacon [reason alone], I’m not concerned with the possibility of trichinosis in my extremely high quality bush-raised-and-handled-by-me pork and skipping right past freezing and into to curing and dry … Read More
Dry Cured Pig Face, Complete.
When we butchered pigs back in mid-October, one pig face was allocated to dry curing [details here], and today it came down from its hook in the cellar – 2 months later. I’ve successfully cured a number of jowls, and was keen to see how this one turned out as it lacked the slashes we’ve had from processor-butchered jowls, and … Read More
‘Charcuterie Day’ 2011
I’m used to butchering pigs on ‘Pig Day‘, and largely leaving charcuterie fun for some point in the winter when I feel like it. Not this year. My cellar’s empty. I feel like it now. I wanted to get started as soon as possible on a few different preparations. I also had to resist going too crazy today. For example, … Read More
Guanciale – Final Product
We put up 20 Irvings Farm Fresh pork jowls December 11, and it’s finally at a place I’d hope it would get – nearly 2 months later. Dense, with a light high-toned loveliness imparted by dry curing pork. The verdict? Sliced thinly and fried is a bacon-like experience that is lovely indeed. It fried up extremely fast [low moisture?], and … Read More
Guanciale Project: Day 8. Hang Day and Innovation
Today was the day the plethora of guanciale was due to hang. They’d cured for a week, had released a couple tbsp maybe of fluid per, and a fry-up proved salty enough to proceed – not wanting to risk oversalting if we left them longer. So into a big clean sink of water they went, got a solid rub-down-rinse, then … Read More
Guanciale Project: Day 1
Today was day 1 of a pretty major charcuterie project – the dry curing of pork jowl. Not that jowl is tricky to cure, what makes this a big project is that we did not one jowl, not a pair of jowls, but 20. Yep. 20 pig jowls. Why? A friend wanted to do some R&D on having the cured … Read More