Modernist Bacon and more demolition

Work in the kitchen progressed today, but before that happend I had to get the Modernist bacon hanging. The pork belly spent a week curing in a vacuum bag. Now it will spend a week curing in the fridge before smoking.

The pancetta will cure a few more days before I take it out. I think I'm going hang it next to the bacon in the basement fridge and see how it turns out. Work progressed in the kitchen today. Here is an afternoon shot.
 

And again this afternoon.

I'm gong to miss you most of all, Kitchen Sink.

A Bacon Christmas Miracle

With the help of the internet and a really nice librarian named Terry, I have in my possession the bacon recipe from Modernist Cuisine. If you are half as excited as I am about this, you are pretty damn excited my friend. Terry kindly found the page I wanted out the the 6 volumes (a mere 2500 pages), scanned it and then emailed it to me. Now I have to go ingredient hunting. The recipe calls for Fermento.  I wish I knew that last week because I was in Buffalo and could have picked some up. Luckily I have a friend out there that will be able to hook me up so I can avoid shipping charges. The other ingredient I doubt I can find locally is sodium erythorbate. I'll just have to pick a store online and go from there. Everything else is just spices and Cure#1. I've got plenty of Cure#1.

Definitely going to get a whole Berkshire belly from Adventure in Food for this one. This is so awesome. I have been looking for this recipe off and on since the book came out.

Thank you, Terry.

Charcutepalooza

Projects 11 & 12 and Thanksgiving Wrap-up

Project 11 was a dry cure and I went with a Tuscan Salami recipe. After the salami had lost just over 30% of its starting weight, I put them into vacuum bag, sealed them and put them in the fridge. Then I traveled for work. About a week before Thanksgiving, I opened some of the vacuum bags and tasted. It was good, but a little more drying would help. So I wrapped the salami in parchment paper and put them back in the fridge. A week in the fridge improved them significantly. I sliced a few of them up for a Thanksgiving appetizer. I plan to bring a bunch to the curling club on Monday night.

The final Charcutpalooza project was to celebrate the skills learned at a meal. I thought Thanksgiving would be the perfect opportunity to share some of the Charcutepalooza experience. The goal was to have at least 3 Charcutepalooza inspired items at a meal. The first at Thanksgiving was the salami. The second was the grilled vegetable and goat cheese terrine. I did my best to slice it so it looked pretty. It tasted better than it looked. I will chalk this up to being one of those "now that you have done it once, the next time will be better" experiences. Now I know what to expect.

Next up was the turkey. After the dry rub and rinsing, I smoked the turkey. This is that offset smoker that recently made the trip from my sister-in-laws house to mine. Behind it are the trusty Webers. That 18" one on the left has been with me since 1997. The 22" on the right was a father's day gift 6 years ago.

If I had to guess, the turkey wasn't fully thawed. I thought it was but I don't think so. The bird went into the smoker before 11 AM. By 3:30 (the time I was hoping to take it off to rest), the temperature of the thigh was 120 degrees. I took it from the smoker and went to the oven and named the process smo-roasting. While it came out late, the turkey looked pretty and tasted pretty good too. And through the power of beer, wine and some North Carolina moonshine my brother brought, I was the only one that cared about the delay with dinner.

The fourth and final Charcutepalooza inspired dish was the string beans. I cooked up some homemade pancetta. I added some garlic and a dash of vinegar to the pan and the reheated the blanched beans. It came out pretty good. Not too many beans were left and that pancetta is delicious.

All in all, it was a good Thanksgiving.

And last night there were leftovers. This is one of my favorite sandwiches. You've got good bread, turkey, stuffing and gravy in there. Something about bread in bread is delicious. While I was taking this picture I was asked, "Daddy, why are you taking pictures of your dinner?" Probably because I'm a little crazy.

Charcutepalooza Project #11

Curing

Well, the Charcutepalooza Challenge is winding down. And this isn't a project you can finish at the last minute so when I had a little time, I got started. Normally, I grind and stuff sausage on the same night. Unfortunately, I usually start these projects at 9 after everyone has gone to bed. The grinding and stuffing don't take that long. It's the cleaning up that is really the pain in the ass. And with this project you have to add making all kinds of bastardized knots. Sure the knots probably aren't supposed to be bastardized versions of real knots, but I was never in the scouts. I excel at shoe laces and if the situation called for it, I think I could remember how to tie off a line to a cleat on a sailboat. That's about it. Instead of grinding, stuffing and than playing with twine on the same evening (which in the past has ended close to 2 am), I split the work up.  On Saturday, I cut up the pork butt I purchased from Sweet Tree Farm and mixed it with all the Tuscan Salami ingredients. On Sunday, I ground the meat and mixed everything together. On Monday, after my trick or treaters were passed out in their sugar induced comas, I stuff the salami, tied it all up and hung it in the basement. Here's the play by play.

I brought out the pork butt and cut up the meat. The ratio of pork to fat looked good to me so I didn't supplement the mix with any back fat.

Once the meat/fat was cut up, it was weighed (1711 grams for those of you keeping score at home).

This particular formulation was created by Chef Bob del Gross over at the Hunger Artist. For the record, I am not sucking up to a judge. Instead of trying something new, I wanted to try and repeat a previous success. As far as curing salami goes, I have always tried something new and had success as well as a few failures. Therefore, in a roundabout faulty logic kind of way, I am trying something new by attempting to repeat previous results. That's my rationalization and I'm sticking to it.

Armed with this weight, I was able to calculate how much of the rest of the ingredients I needed. Starting from the top left corner and working clockwise you have: a glass with a little over 3 grams of Bactoferm F-RM-52 dispersed 28 grams of distilled water, a bowl with 37 grams of Kosher salt and 5 grams of Instacure #2, a bowl with 23 grams of dextrose, a bow with 9 grams of toasted fennel (left half of bowl) and 9 grams of coarsely cracked black pepper (right half of bowl), a small glass bowl with 6 grams of minced garlic, and finally 137 grams of red wine.

Every thing got mixed together and went back into the fridge for a good soak. Then I drank the remaining 600 or so grams of wine. Pretty tasty. See, the metric system can be fun. That was all on Saturday.

On Sunday, I ran everything through the grinder.

Once the meat was ground, I mixed in any remaining liquid (kind of in the left of the photo) and stirred to combine. Here's what went into the fridge on Sunday.

After Halloween came to an end on Monday, I put the meat into hog casings. This isn't the easiest thing to photograph when working by yourself. As a general rule, my wife prefers our digital camera to remain sausage free. Here's the set up. I put the canister of the vertical stuffer in the freezer for a while to get cold. That's why it is frosty.

Got the casings ready to go and the meat in the stuffer.

A few minutes later, all of the salami are stuffed and ready to be tied.

With a new episode of Beavis and Butthead on in the background, I sat down at the table and began to tie up the salami. The show had a few smiles but it was funnier in 1995 when drinking a beer 1:30 in the morning with your roommates while winding down from finishing an engineering assignment in college. When Beavis and Butthead was over I turned on an episode of Community and kept making knots. The lesson I took away from this 45 minutes or so of playing with twine: next time, turn on the radio. Here are the salami in bondage.

Each string of salami was weighed so I can keep track of moisture loss. The weight was written on a piece of masking tape and stuck to the bottom. The ambient humidity in the basement is pretty much right in the salami's wheelhouse. The humidity, measure by the little white box at the top/center of the picture  moves between 60 and 65%. The air temperature is also in the low 60s. I took down the plastic drop cloth I have used in the past and I'm just going to let the salami hang out down there. They will probably come down in another week or so. I hope they taste as good as they currently smell.

Upcoming Charcutepalooza Challenge

This month the challenge is to cure something. I'm going to go back to one of the first things I cured and try to improve it a little. The recipe is a formulation by Chef Bob del Grosso and the only time I made it, I loved it. I shared some of the finished prodect, but I ate a lot of it myself. I am hoping lightening strikes twice.

Since I can't just make it again, there will be two changes. First, I'm using a different wine. This one was recommended by a staff member at Empire earlier today. For the second change, I'm going to try and use that "good mold" starter culture again. If I didn't already have it in the freezer, I'd probably skip it.

I just put the pork but in the fridge to start thawing. I picked it up at the Sweet Tree Farm stand at the Troy Farmer's Market a few weeks ago. I asked the gentleman running the stand if the pork had been frozen for more than three weeks. He got a little bit of an unhappy look on his face. I think he thought I wouldn't buy it if it had been frozen longer than three weeks. I explained that I was planing to cure the pork and that's why I wanted to know. He looked relieved to have his sale back and told me the meat had been frozen for a little over two months. He then added, "You don't have to worry about trichinosis with this meat. I don't feed them crap."

I have been curing meat off and on for a few years. Probably more off than on, but I have purchased frozen pork 6 or 7 times and asked about freezer time. This was the first time the person I asked knew why I was asking. An impressive surprise.

Charcutepalooza Project #3 - continued

First a flashback to Project 2 - that pancetta is the best I have ever made. Fantastic stuff.

Returning to Project 3 - We had corned beef sandwiches for dinner last night. I thought it came out pretty good. There are probably a few things I would change. First, I think I'd cut back on the red pepper flakes. I was surprised how easy it was to feel their heat. It was good, just not something I was expecting in corned beef. Corned beef is supposed to be salty but I thought this was a little too salty. I'm going to blame that on not enough water in my cooking method. Here's how the corned beef went:

I rinsed the cured brisket and put into my slow cooker and filled it with water. Added 2 more tablespoons of the pickling spice and put it on low to simmer.

Here's what it looked like when it came out.

My younger daughter wasn't too into it. My older daughter liked it, but then I think some of the heat from the red pepper caught up to her. All in all, I thought the project was a success. It's all gone...Next time I would scale back some of the red pepper (maybe only use it in either the brine or the cooking liquid but not both). I'd also try to cook the beef in more water. I have a few bottom round roasts that I have never had success cooking. I think I might try to turn them into corned beef and see how they turn out.

Just under the wire, I thought I could get a chicken into the poultry brine and roast it for dinner tonight. Back to back brine projects. Started with weighing out salt and sugar in the white bowl next to the lemons. The rest of the ingredients, except some peppercorns are on the plate. There's parsley, tarragon, garlic, onion and some bay leaves. They all went into half a gallon of boiling water.

 

Once the salt ans sugar were dissolved, I poured the half gallon of brine into a bowl with a half gallon block of ice to cool.

The chicken ( a 4 pound bird) went into a ziplock bag and then got filled with the completely cooled brine. This went into the fridge for about 15 hours. The chicken got rinsed this morning and went back into the fridge uncovered to dry.

I put the chicken in the oven and waited. When I thought it was done (i was getting good temperature readings in the breast and thigh), I put the broiler on to crisp and brown the skin a little more. I took it out and let it rest. Then I cut it up. The thigh joint was still a little pink. I finished breaking down the bird and put it back in the oven. Dinner was now officially late. The breast meat was very juicy, tender and had a very nice flavor. The dark meat seemed to be a little more flavored by the brine. The tarragon flavor was much stronger. Lesson learned: I'm not really a tarragon fan. I also need a better roasting pan. This one kind of sucks.

Challenge Number 4 is out: Hot smoking. I've got to get started on that because I think I'm going to be busy around the 15th of April. No time for last minute charcuterie.

Charcutepalooza Project #3 - Continued

This has been a very busy couple of weeks and my Charcutepalooza plans didn't go quite as planned. There have been 2 birthdays, a weekend in Connecticut, a weekend at my in-laws and a bunch of curling just before the season ends. Plus, my brothers and I have started meeting up online to play poker together. I've probably spent more time with them in the past two weeks online than I did last year. The power of the internet.  Throw in doctor's appointments, kindergarten screening, kids at the dentist and fighting snow and the past few weeks have been downright crazy. Luckily, I've given up sleeping.

I had such great plans, the corned beef, the tongues and maybe a chicken or something else...Not going to get to the tongues right now. No time and the wife made it clear that she didn't want to eat it. Everyone has there lines. Muscle that makes of porterhouse - good, muscle that makes up tongue - not so much. So far only the corned beef has started. It is currently curing in the fridge. I'll cook it on Sunday or Monday. Here's how it's going so far:

Stopped by Dean's on Central and picked up some spices. I pretty much followed the recipe out of Charcuterie but I left out the cloves. Only because I really hate cloves. The smell reminds me of the dentist office I went to as a kid. The very same office that made me afraid of dentists. I am the Anti-Dentite out of Seinfeld. I try to cook my food with love and omit the childhood trauma so - no cloves.

 

I started by making a small batch of the pickling spice. Here are the peppercorns, mustard seeds and coriander getting weighed out.

 

Then they get toasted. Nicely toasted.

 

The rest of the pickling spice is weighed out. You've got  red pepper flakes, allspice, mace, a cinnamon stick, bay leaves and ground ginger in there.

 

Everything gets smashed together. About half is going into the brine, the other half gets cooked with the corned beef.

 

HEre are the brine ingredients: salt, sugar, cure#1, and pickling spice.

 

Few cloves of garlic too.

 

It all got dumped into a half gallon of boiling water. I had the other half gallon mostly frozen to cool it down. It didn't cool it enough and the brine got chilled overnight.

 

Personally, I thought the brine smelled pretty good. I was told the next morning that the smell was not exactly conducive to falling asleep. Sorry, hon. The brisket and gallon of brine are resting comfortably in the fridge. I'm looking forward to cooking it.

Charcutepalooza Project #2 - Continued

Bacon Explosion! 4 out of 5 cardiologists surveyed do not recommend this.

Way back in January of 2009, I read this article in the New York Times food section and knew that one day I would definitely make my own Bacon Explosion. What is a Bacon Explosion? On the outside, there is a bacon weave. Yes a bacon weave. Think lattice pie crust but bacon (a tutorial on how to make the nicest bacon weave I have ever seen is here). The weave is covering a mass of sausage. And pinwheeled inside this mass of sausage is some cooked bacon. This is the kind of meal that would be served in that Saturday Night Live sketch with the guys talking about "Da Bears" and drinking beer to work through their heart attacks.

Quick disclosure: My homemade bacon was not long enough to make the weave. I was bummed, but still moved forward. The cooked bacon on the inside is part of the Carcutepalooza project and I made the sausage. But the bacon for the weave was purchased.

First thing, make some sweet Italian sausage. My recipe is pretty straight forward -combine pork and fat, salt, pepper, and fennel. Grind. If you cut the pork into strips, the grinder grabs it and pulls it through by itself.

Then I fired up some homemade bacon. Couldn't resist a taste. It's good.

I made a weave out of the store bought bacon. As you can see, the pork belly I purchased to cure did not compare in size with what I picked up at the Fresh Market. I dusted the weave with some homemade rub. I left the salt out of the rub since there would be plenty in the bacon and the sausage.

 
Laid out the sausage in a rectangle, dusted it with rub and topped with chopped fried bacon. Seriously, how bad could this taste?

Time to make a log. I didn't end up going diagonally like Cowgirl. Maybe next time. I have never made anything like this so there was a little bit of a learning curve.I think I could have made the wave a little bigger and used less sausage. And the weave could have been tighter. In the bacon giddiness I was experiencing, I forgot to start the weave in the middle. Still, looking good though.

 

 Dinner was going to be at my brother and sister-in-laws house. We fired up the Weber kettle with the coals on one side And set up a little foil baffle to cut down on the direct heat of the coals.

I flipped it wound twice and after about an hour and a half the inside temp was 160 degrees. I put the Explosion on a plate tented with foil to rest.

Dinner is served....

I thought it was pretty good. There was some room for improvement. Didn't get as much of a pinwheel effect as I wanted, but overall not a bad first effort. At times, I can be my own worst critic but a kid will always tell you like it is. My niece Abby has been a fan of my homemade sausage in the past. Tonight, she was at the kids table when she took her first bite. "Wow, the sausage is REALLY yummy! Allison (her cousin sitting next to her) have you tried the sausage?" Couldn't help to puff up with a little pride after overhearing that.

The pancetta is still drying out in the chamber. Probably will be done a few days ofter the 15th Chacutepalooza deadline, but it is on the way. Looks and smells good.