Sunday, March 27, 2011

Feeding my obsession

I ordered this book from Amazon a couple weeks ago



And haven't been able to put it down. I mentioned in a previous post my current obsession with charcuterie and this weekend was all about it. Friday after work the boys and I went to our local meat market, Granzin's and got a fresh pork belly. (Bacon who hoo!!!)
Saturday we packed the boys in the car early (well early for them) and headed up to Austin to check out the farmer's market. Jen had told me about a few people that sold at the farmer's market to check out. I got some Pate Campagne and some Morcilla blood sausage from Kocurek Family Charcuterie . I also got some venison breakfast sausage and some fresh lard (in preparation for confit) from Dai Due.
I couldn't wait to dive into the Pate from Kocurek Charcuterie. As soon as we got home from our day (We also took the boys to Salt Lick in Driftwood, Wimberly Glassworks and Cabela's) I grabbed the baguette I had brought home from work Friday from the freezer (let it defrost of course) and tucked into my pate. Happy sigh.

So today (Sunday) I tackled the pork belly.

So pretty

This bacon is gonna be so good.

Seriously.

I made up a batch of Michael Ruhlman's Basic Dry Cure
And got to work. I coated the belly in the dry cure (both sides)

and placed it in a 2.5 gallon zip bag. I decided to give the maple cured bacon recipe so I added some maple syrup to the bag



squished it all around the pork belly. It's sitting in a 1/4 sheet pan in the fridge and according to Michael Ruhlman it will sit there for 7 days. I just hope we can wait that long.

I found this website from Michael Ruhlman's site : http://www.mrswheelbarrow.com/charcutepalooza/the-ruhls-2/

I am not participating in the challenges officially, I kinda stumbled upon it too late. And too, only 1 month to complete challenges could be a little difficult given how much I have been working lately. I plan on working my way through the book at my own pace. Feel free to join in if you'd like. Get the book, Amazon has it for less than $20 and free shipping if you have Amazon Prime (like I do and I totally abuse it!). Feel free to post with your experiences or questions and I'll link back to your blog.

Happy curing!

No comments:

Post a Comment