Home-Cured Canadian Bacon

Pork Loin brined in salt, brown sugar, liquid smoke, peppercorns, and garlic for three days, then cooked sous vide at 150 for about 2 hours.

Yum, delicious, tender, succulent, great eaten cold on sandwiches, even better slightly rendered in a pan.

Yummy in an omelet with garlic scapes.

Bacon

It all started with my procuring of a 4 pound Lancaster pork belly, from my buddy the butcher. "Mmm" I thought, pork belly is second only to foie gras in my hierarchy of meats.

I found Ruhlman's recipe online, then set about making the cure, and placing the belly in a plastic bag for a week.

That was a sad week.

Each day I would open up the fridge to find the belly staring at me with puppy eyes, begging me to braise it and devour it right away. That week put me in touch with animal lovers across the world. I practiced composure and restraint until it was time to remove the belly.

I roasted, not smoked, the meat- smoking wasn't convenient at the time. Though bacon connoisseurs may scoff, I beg them to taste.

This bacon is much more than salty, fatty, heaven. The flavors of thyme, bay, and peppercorn, rarely detectable in bacon, harmonize to create ultra-flavorful, multi-dimensional meat, that is yes, salty, fatty, heaven as well.

I did not make all of the belly into bacon however. Half is dry-curing to become pancetta. Updates on that in the future!

ALERT: For the next few days, maybe even a week, my attention will be devoted to writing about my recent meal at Per Se.

Yes, I went back.

Pulled Pork

I had never smoked. I'd heard it's addictive, that once you start you never stop. Supposedly it relaxes you, makes you feel good. Oh, I almost forgot to tell you. I'm talking about smoking on a grill.

At the time we were working on a project in English class pertaining to the novel Lord of the Flies by William Golding. I hope you've read it, it's an interesting novel, but if you haven't it's basically about a group of boys stranded on an island, who go crazy and hunt pigs and paint their faces and such. Our project consisted of choosing 6 smaller projects from a list of about 12. One of the options was to make up your own project related to the novel. At once I thought about food, but then hesitated. The previous week we had been asked to write our thoughts down about a specific chapter. When it was my turn to present to the class, I showed a picture of a pig on a spit and described it "a large Berkshire hog, roasting over an open flame, the meat cooking evenly as it roasts on the spit, and the fat slowly rendering out to produce wonderfully crispy crackling." My deviance from the topic (yet wonderful imagery) produced a stern look from the teacher. What would she think if I tried to relate smoking a pork shoulder to the novel?

"You know how they cook pig for food in Lord of the Flies, well, could I bring you a pulled pork sandwich as a project?" She excitedly obliged! Great!

I bought a pork shoulder the previous day then spent 8 hours on Sunday changing wood chips, making barbecue sauce, and allowing the hickory smoke to permeate my nostrils as my shoulder cooked down to tenderness. During the last 2 hours I basted the shoulder with a "mop" of white vinegar, apple cider vinegar, brown sugar, salt, pepper, and cayenne.

Finally I pulled it out, let it cool, then tossed the fork aside and pulled it apart with my fingers. I tossed the meat with some barbecue sauce, heaped it on a hamburger bun, then brought it in to school the next day for one happy teacher.