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franzb69

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LOL. K-fed requested pictures of bacon so here they are.....

This will be my first sharing of food I like to make at home. I'm a professionally trained cook, a graduate of culinary school. Currently jobless at the moment, you know the economy and all that. Looking into some employment opportunities as we speak. Perhaps I'll find employment overseas.

I've always loved charcuterie and ever since a year ago I've been playing around with making sausages and cured meats. But then the problem with being in asia and in a 3rd world country is that one doesn't really get much access to ingredients that would be ideal, I mean there are but I would have to have a restaurant to have access to them as they are only sold to restaurants and even then they would keep that as a highly regarded resource that they would never divulge so easily.

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This is my first try in making bacon with curing salts. I've always made them without and as a person who has always had (and many of us do) the conventional kind, the more modern kind, it had always been made with nitrites and nitrates or whatever. So I made a batch of dry cure based off of Michael Ruhlman's book Charcuterie and used that as my base. I've been making bacon without curing salts for a while now so I wanna see if I know I can make good bacon out of local pork with the cure and and a few other additions.

here's the pic of my bacon now being cured in a ziplock bag. about 1.6 kilos after trimming off the soft bone and the skin. I cut it in half as I don't have a deli slicer or a long enough knife to cut it down properly, and ziplocks only come in sandwich size and gallon size bags here. This was a perfect time for me play around with my new lefty hankotsu from korin. Which by the way, did wonderfully. I always ask the part nearer the rib cage as belly here is a lot fatter nowadays as it used to. so it had some bone in it that had to be taken out.

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I like my food spicy and I wanted to try out a different kind of bacon, one with a dry rub so I added some herbs and spices that I thought would go well with it. Not a lot of bacon variety out here as you can gather. I also added some liquid smoke to give it a smokey flavor. I know the pictures aren't much to look at but hopefully in 7-10 days of curing and then another day in the fridge to dry out will do it.

I don't have a smoker so pardon the lack of equipment. Maybe one day I'll have some cash to get myself a smoker.

I'll put in more pix of the bacon after the whole process has been finished. Sorry if I never got to take pictures of the hankotsu and the pork belly in action. I was just overly excited using it and too hungry to think. LOL.

Be patient, the bacon will come!


I'll add onto whatever else I cook that I deem to be worthy posting. =D
 
Nice, I've got 2 phillipinos working for/with me, and worked with a few in the past.
You've all got good work ethics from what I've experienced.
 
OH Damn ! now I have to say screw Tibet.... We all have to get together to send bacon to the Philippines !!!!! bumper stickers are being made now !@ :) Looks good hope it tastes as good.
 
Nice, I've got 2 phillipinos working for/with me, and worked with a few in the past.
You've all got good work ethics from what I've experienced.

thanks, as many of you may know, our number one import is our people. lol. and we excel in that area, work ethic.

=D

OH Damn ! now I have to say screw Tibet.... We all have to get together to send bacon to the Philippines !!!!! bumper stickers are being made now !@ Looks good hope it tastes as good.

thanks stumblin, i haven't disappointed anyone yet, or at least i think so. lol.
 
Ya know, you do not need to spend money on equipment to have a smoker. Some clay pots and a hot plate, for instance. Check Alton Brown's setup!
 
Can also use a wok, alu foil and a bamboo steamer.
Or wok, colander and a lid/upside down wok
 
Ya know, you do not need to spend money on equipment to have a smoker. Some clay pots and a hot plate, for instance. Check Alton Brown's setup!

i know spike, but i kinda like having my own toys. =D

but i will try that hot plate set up one time just to see if it's easy enough to do to keep doing that before i finally decide on getting a smoker or not. i've seen alton brown's set up from watching his show good eats (not that it gets shown on here, really educational stuff, seen every episode that came out two years ago).

Can also use a wok, alu foil and a bamboo steamer.
Or wok, colander and a lid/upside down wok

thanks shaneg, i kinda get the idea. =D
 
The best way to smoke for longevity is cold smoking. A couple of five or ten gallon cans and some pipe, sheet metal screws a drill and some bolts and you can have a simple workable smoker. You want to separate the heat from the meat so the smoke is cool when it gets to the target. We used to use old refrigerators back when they were all metal. Had a box stove for the heat, about 8 feet of stove pipe and the ice box. Made perfect smoked fish, meats and cheese.

Of course what fuel you use to make the smoke has a direct impact on the flavor. Here we have fruit woods, oaks, cherry and other nut woods.
 
yup know all about it. only thing i'm worried about cold smoking is being in a tropical country. thanks for the tip.
 
I was thinking once it's salt cured it should be OK to smoke. What is the traditional method for protein longevity?
 
thanks for sharing sw2geeks. i don't have a grill either so that's still not an option, at least not yet.

i'm thinking of getting an aftermarket sous vide temp controller that can serve as a temp regulator for a smoker (two birds in one stone, sous vide temp controller and a smoker temp controller in one!), and since it's only $50, that i'm gonna think up using a hot plate and a cast iron pan. for the sous vide set up, i'd probably get a food grade immersion pump to circulate the water... but that's for another project. hehe. still trying to complete my kitchen toys first before i get on up to the really serious kitchen stuff.
 
sweet =). Made my own pastrami last summer but forgot to take picks of the process.
 
well this i promise that when it all gets cured i'll take pictures hehe.


I was thinking once it's salt cured it should be OK to smoke. What is the traditional method for protein longevity?

i'll see what i can think up with, with what's locally available here then i'll see what my options are with cold smoking or otherwise. =D

protein longevity? you got me, curing it. it should be okay....was just overthinking things.... 3rd world butchering isn't exactly all that sanitary, haccp here is an afterthought, but then again our guts are bit more resilient. lol.
 
The best way to smoke for longevity is cold smoking. A couple of five or ten gallon cans and some pipe, sheet metal screws a drill and some bolts and you can have a simple workable smoker. You want to separate the heat from the meat so the smoke is cool when it gets to the target. We used to use old refrigerators back when they were all metal. Had a box stove for the heat, about 8 feet of stove pipe and the ice box. Made perfect smoked fish, meats and cheese.

Of course what fuel you use to make the smoke has a direct impact on the flavor. Here we have fruit woods, oaks, cherry and other nut woods.
Or you could move to a subartic climate like I live in and wait for a day that is -10 and do it then.
 
yup know all about it. only thing i'm worried about cold smoking is being in a tropical country. thanks for the tip.

Nice work on the bacon man! Looks great! Just make sure you're using nitrites and not nitrates in your cure, big diff :)

And Cold smoking really just means smoking around/under 100f. It could even be pushed up a few more degrees. So as long as you do it on a cooler day, or cooler eve, you should have no problems. And it is really quite easy to setup a simple smoker, and well worth it. All the ones suggested here are great ideas. I don't follow you on the sous vide/smoker setup, maybe I'm a bit slow today lol.

And IMHO, hot smoking requires more equipment and is quite a bit tougher than cold smoking. Try it!!
 
thanks everyone. i'll see what i can come up with with the smoker thing.....
 
finally the bacon is ready! lol. washed off the cure, left it in the chiller for 24 hours to get that "skin" that everyone looks for in cured meats.

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fried up a few

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i love making breakfast meals at all hours of the day. but this time i had it as a warm salad and bacon vinaigrette dressing with an egg over easy. too bad i forgot to take pix of the salad. lol.

oh and i had this for lunch:

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sea mantis! darn things look more like bugs than anything. they taste like a cross between lobster and shrimp. in my language the name for this gets to be sea centipede, which is kinda wrong. coz it looks more like a mantis coz of the front appendages. didn't get to cook it coz i woke up and my mom (yes i live with my mother, financial problems and all that) she just steamed it up with some salt and that was that. just wanted to post it coz i haven't had this in probably 15 or more years.
 
as for the taste and texture.....

wish i had a smoker, coz this thing still feels like it needs to get smoked to dry it out some more and add flavor. as for the flavor from the test batch, it tasted more like the filipino favorite tocino. (toh-see-no) so it's like a cross between bacon and tocino. which is fine. guess i'll need to tweak the rub that i added a bit more. i got subtle hints of all that i added so that was pretty good.

tocino is made similarly like bacon. pink salt, sugar and salt, minus the smoking and most likely the proper ratio of curing agent. it's probably the closest thing we can relate to as bacon here. it's a lot sweeter than bacon and usually made with leaner cuts of pork. notice on this sample picture that even the fat on the tocino is pink / red. i don't even eat the stuff knowing what's in it. it's good though. lol.

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just had sunday lunch so.....

we had some roast chicken

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since none of us really like eating breast, we just bought a bunch of leg and thigh's.

cooked in butter, kaffir lime leaves and tarragon (both from my garden). =D
 
some old pix of stuff i've cooked....


steamed lapu lapu, chinese style. taste and texture similar to sea bass.

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miso soup from scratch

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dehydrating habaneros for chili powder

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home made sausages

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kimchi!

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hainanese chicken

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fried tawilis with seasalt, pepper, capers, balsamic vinegar, distant fresh water cousin to the sardine only found in my province, a landlocked species.

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kimchi fried rice with spam, taught by my canadian friend that hung out with lots of koreans

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all made and cooked by yours truly.
 
thanks. yes it is! tested out my new food processor so i had to make some bread. lol.

everything is better with bacon.
 
just so you know.

Hainanese chicken is my all time favorite meal..it is my request meal, should i ever find myself on death row. and about to get killed.

i had my first plate from some hawker cart in malaysia. changed my idea on chicken and rice..NICE job, buddy!!
 
that kimchee fried rice needs a fried egg on top!! i might make that for dinner tonight!!
 
just so you know.

Hainanese chicken is my all time favorite meal..it is my request meal, should i ever find myself on death row. and about to get killed.

i had my first plate from some hawker cart in malaysia. changed my idea on chicken and rice..NICE job, buddy!!

thanks. first i had it was when i was a young kid taking a vacation in hongkong, ate it at an underground canteen under a hotel. back when it was still there, all the locals ate there. it was an everyday type of thing for them. when my family had it, we had it literally every single day for the rest of the vacation. lol. we didn't know what it was but it was awesome. who knew cold chicken and hot rice went so well together? lol. there are a lot of knock offs of said chicken here now so i can now have it all the time if i wanted to. but it doesn't taste quite the same though. it's gotta be the special breed of chicken that they said they use.

that kimchee fried rice needs a fried egg on top!! i might make that for dinner tonight!!

only did the kimchi fried rice how the koreans did it. but yeah, does feel like it needs something on top.

=D
 

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