Bacon comes out of the smoker

A couple hours later, it looks like the bacon has reached 150F internal temp. Took longer than I expected: I was watching the temperature and it was rising and then sort of hung around at about 120-130F without moving up much.  Probably the surface moisture evaporating off the meat.

Went through about 5 or 6 bisquettes. At $6/dozen, this is about $3 of wood chips.  On the other hand, I have no idea if this is going to come out too smoky or not smoky enough. As always, there's some amount of experimentation needed.

So here's what the finished product looks like.  Next, into the refrigerator to chill it, then we'll try slicing.

New Smoker! Bacon!

I got a brand new Bradley smoker for my birthday (Thank you, Sally!) and this is its maiden voyage (if voyage is the right word here? Outing perhaps?). Here it is sitting in a temporary home out in the back yard (note the very un-winter-like Southern California weather we're having).  I think I'm going to build/buy a little shelf or table to put it on that's somewhat lower than the counter top it's on now (because I hate "reaching up" to things).  Maybe a rolling cart of some sort?  A bit of use should help converge on the right height and configuration.

After running the initial break-in empty, I had the Ruhlman recipe bacon (see previous posts) cured, trimmed and sitting in the refrigerator, so why not smoke it. Stick the probe into the bacon, clip the air temp probe to the rack, fire it up, and away we go. Mesquite wood for now (because that's the first package I opened).

Here's the bacon slabs on the racks, probed and ready.  Per Ruhlman, I'll get the smoker up to 200F and wait til the meat temp is 150F.

I'm using a Maverick ET73.  I found that it was cheaper to buy a whole new unit with two probes for $30 than to try and buy replacement probes for the thermometer I already have.  Consumer electronics pricing is certainly odd.

And just because I'm that kind of person, I'll probably look into PID control using a Arduino with a web interface.

Hanging complete?

The bellies have hung now for about 5 days, so they're ready to come out.  Over the past week, I've sort of been watching the temperature, and it's been running between 12-14C the entire time. I think I am getting some drips from the cold plate, so I'll have to fix that.

The first one to come out was the Len Poli recipe Honey bacon, which had been treated with the liquid smoke (so it doesn't need to be smoked). It was a bit weird coming out of the chamber, sort of a combination between tacky and slimy (which, to be honest, is what I'd expect).  So I rinsed it off and commenced to remove the skin.  This is a huge challenge, as it happens. You want to get the skin off, but leave hard fat behind (the white stuff between the pink meat stripes in the stuff you buy at the store).  The particular piece of belly for this one was at the end, and so it isn't a nice slab, and it had chunks of soft fat hanging on it which I trimmed off.

The physical configuration was such that after skinning and trimming, what I really had was a bunch of what looks and feels like flat canadian bacon, which was pretty lean, without much of the intervening fat you'd see in traditional "streaky bacon". The individual chunks were perhaps an inch thick. So I sliced it up (note to self, chill that stuff so it's stiffer next time, and easier to slice thin). The final product is basically a bunch of strips that are fairly thick (1/4") rather than the 1/8" or thinner I think I'd like. The photo shows all the strips on a half sheet pan.

Fried up some samples, and yes, it's definitely bacon, but the fact that it's so lean makes it hard to get a good sizzle. And the honey in the cure tends to burn.  In any case, it tastes good, not too salty (which I was worried about). And definitely a cured meat taste (nice and pink), but perhaps more canadian bacon like?  I think it will work just fine.  Here's the unsliced, ready for smoking, bacon with the Ruhlman recipe (more seasoning, cracked pepper, garlic, etc.  Almost a pancetta, I think).  This has better slicing properties.

And now for the pancetta!

This is what we're really going for. Same basic process, pull the belly out, rinse it off, skin it, and then, roll it up.  That rolling process is easy to say "remove the belly after it has hung for X days, then roll it".  But which way do you roll it? Front to back along the pig, or side to side.  Medial to lateral or vice versa? Does it even make any difference?

I had cut the belly (which was about 18" wide and 24" long) into 4 chunks, in the sideways to the pig direction, so my pancetta strips seemed to roll properly when done laterally. Lots of butcher twine, crank it tight (so that after some more curing, it sticks together when sliced into nice round slices). Ruhlman doesn't bother rolling, since usually you're going to cube the stuff before cooking, but I thought I'd give it a shot.

So here's a nicely rolled pancetta, ready for hanging back in the chamber for a few days (how long? I have no idea. maybe til the outside gets drier?)

The whole rolling thing is kind of interesting, because, after all, you're rolling something that is a composite of squishy and firm, and it tends to squeeze out the end of the roll. If you've ever made a braciole or involtini, and rolled up a long thin piece of meat, you know what it's like.  I think in the commercial market, they use longer pieces (so the weird looking end is is a smaller part of the overall salumi) or they use some sort of mold or form.  The Len Poli recipe talks about using a synthetic casing and wrapping that around, which might sort of "squish" the ends into shape. And here's a picture of some scraps I trimmed off the bellies before rolling (to make the edges squarer).

Pork Bellies hanging

Got 4 bellies hanging in the chamber.  2 bacon and 2 pancetta, from left to right above).  In each case, one recipe from Len Poli (http://lpoli.50webs.com/) and one from Michael Ruhlman (http://www.ruhlman.com/). They all sat in their 2 gallon bags with the curing salt and seasonings for a week, with periodic flipping, agitation, and rubbing.  I cut the original 13 pound belly into 4 roughly equal pieces.

We'll see how they come out.  Looking forward to it.  One of the bacons needs to be smoked, and all have to have their skin removed.  The pancetta will get rolled in a couple days.

the aging chamber for charcuterie

Now that I've got some bacon and pancetta curing in the refrigerator, I'm a few days away from pulling it from the salt, rinsing, and hanging it to finish the process.  To do this, one needs a suitable place replicating the environment of a mountain cave in northern Italy. (about 12C and 50% RH.. pretty much the same as storing and aging wine.. there's a reason that wine and sausage are found in the same places in the world) Short of moving to the Bay Area and digging a hole, something artificial is needed.

It seems that the popular scheme is to modify a refrigerator. One needs to keep it warmer than the normal refrigerator and one needs to deal with the humidity.  My scheme is to hook up an external temperature controller to a 4 cu ft "dorm" refrigerator I have (and pictured below), and then control humidity with a controller that controls the wet bulb temperature. Most of the writeups I've seen on the web use a humidistat and humidity sensor. And there's all this discussion about calibrating your humidistat. Heck, I've already got water in the thing AND I've got temperature sensors, so all I need to do is set a controller up to control wet bulb temp.  And somehow, I don't think this is one of those "must be controlled to 0.01%" applications.  The key is probably making the inertia of the system large (so putting stuff in that can absorb and release moisture slowly is probably the key.  Maybe rocks or bricks?)

My trusty Sanyo refrigerator, having been originally
used as a water chiller for cooling wine.

What temp?  At 55F, 50% RH is a wet bulb of about 46 degrees.  Down to 44 and you're at 40%, up to 48 and you're at 60%. Seems pretty straightforward.  Water reservoir, small pump to circulate/spray the water, and sensor that gets wet.

There should also be a fan to circulate the air in the box. That's easy, I've got boxes of old muffin fans around.

Some issues that I have to figure out:
1) short cycling the compressor is bad. I need to make sure the temperature controller doesn't cycle too short. I think with enough thermal mass on the freezer "coils" (really a plate) that will be ok.
2) Defrosting - Humid air, cold freezer coils. I think frost is inevitable.  Maybe a timer that turns it off for a couple hours a week? (that's basically what auto defrost refrigerators do).  Maybe a heater on the freezer plate?  And then I have to figure out how to keep the water that drips off the freezer from hitting the salumi, etc. hanging under it.

Psychometry
Here's my Psychometric table, which I manually read off a chart and transcribed at the stunning precision of 1 degree F. (I'll have to convert to C eventually)
dry bulb  RH  wet bulb
50    40    40
55    40    44
60    40    48
65    40    52
70    40    56

50    50    42
55    50    46
60    50    50
65    50    54
70    50    58

50    60    44
55    60    48
60    60    52
65    60    56
70    60    61

Grinding pig for sausage

Just some photos of grinding pork cushion meat up for sausage.  It's pretty straightforward using the KitchenAid grinder. As the cookbooks say, keeping things cold is important, so we start with chilling the grinder down before attaching it to the mixer.

And, then, you have your almost frozen meat.  I get the big hunk o'pig from the store (10-25 lbs in a package, cushion meat is around 10-12 lbs) and portion it into 2-2 1/2 batches, cut into 2 inch cubes then freeze it.  When I'm ready to grind, I thaw the batch out, partially, then cut it into 3/4-1 inch chunks (about the right size to drop down the throat of the grinder).

This the bag of frozen cushion meat before grinding, partly thawed.

There is no question that the whole "partially frozen" thing makes life much easier.  Not only is it easy to cube the meat, but it keeps the grinder cold.  Cold grinder means fat doesn't melt, which makes for much better sausage.  Note that this is pretty lean meat here because I've trimmed the fat and am going to grind it separately.

Keeping things cold while grinding is important, so the bowl catching the ground meat sits in a bowl of ice and water.

 

Hmm. Have to figure out how to rotate images

Here's what it looks like coming out of the coarse plate and in the bowl.

Finally, you get to the end, and there's this annoying sort of plug of meat at the end when you pull the auger out. You can run some paper towel down the grinder to push this out, but, on the other hand, it's not all that much.
So what is this "cushion meat"?  I wasn't up for buying a whole package of shoulder at Smart & Final (about 25 lbs, which is actually two shoulders), so I got the cushion which is about 9-10 lbs.  Turns out it's a leaner cut lower down on the front leg than the shoulder (I guess, it's the bicep, rather than the deltoid).  Often it's used for pulled pork and such, or cut into "ham steaks", even though it's nowhere near the back of the pig, where ham comes from.  In any case, it makes fine sausage, but you have to get some fat to mix with it, and that's a bit of a chore.  All the sausage recipes (e.g. Alton Brown) talk about using "fat back", but no supermarket around here seems to have fat back.  Fat backis the fat layer on the back of the pig, under the skin, above the loin/ribs, and is a nice hard fat which makes good sausage.  Think of the fat layer in good bacon or on a steak: it's firm and dense, and grinds well without turning into mush.

Sometimes you can get scraps of fat at the supermarket that they've trimmed off the pork they've packaged, but it's an iffy thing. Somehow, paying $3/lb for scraps of fat to mix with your $1.50/lb lean meat seems weird.  I found that I can get pig back (with skin on..) at a local meat market that does Mexican style cuts, but you have to strip the skin and trim the meat off.  It's what they make chicharrones from. I have no idea what the cut is actually called. 

Breaking down a pork loin

So we needed some boneless pork chops (which we cook all the time for dinner).  Rather than buy them already neatly sliced and in a tray, we've started buying a whole loin at Costco and slicing it up.  Pork.. the new inexpensive protein (yeah.. $2.19/lb for a 9 pound loin. )  Here's a picture of our brand new loin:

There's a helpful little diagram on the back of the loin to tell you how to slice it, but basically you chop off the head and tail to make roasts, and slice the middle to make chops.  Last time I did this, I made some chops and then made 1.5-2 pound roasts, because that's a convenient size.  This time, I only did one roast, I basically turned the rest into roughly 4 oz chops (that being a convenient size.. 1 per person, or maybe 1/2 per person if you split them and make palliards).

This is the end I want to make the roast of, because it has the two muscles in it, the darker muscle having more flavor, in theory. So I cut off about 2.5 lbs

Then it's just a matter of slicing off 4 ounce portions.  My slices are about 3/4" thick and weigh 4 to 4 1/2 ounces.  A good guide is the width of your finger, or the handle of the knife.  You can check it with a scale periodically, but once you get the rhythm going, you can zap off a dozen or so without much variation.

The large division on the scale is 1", but the camera angle is non-optimum.  In any case, maybe 2cm thick?

And, see.. right on 4 oz.  Here's a picture of the entire loin, all broken down. There's a pile of chops and then the roast, and some other ends of the loin, which I leave separate, because maybe I'll make Chile Verde or something needing chunks of pork.  The fat you see in the upper left isn't all that thick.  This is a pretty lean piece of meat (which some folks think is a disadvantage in modern pork, I think I agree). The picture of the chop above shows a typical fat layer. 

Finally, I take all those chops and vacuum seal them 3 at a time (about 12 ounces) as a meal's worth.  I suppose I could sous vide them as is, but for now, it's thaw and cook in whatever.  I kind of like Jacque Pepin's palliard recipe: split them, smash them thinner, salt pepper and thyme, then into a hot frying pan for about 40 seconds/side, hold the palliards, make a pan sauce, done...