Bacon!

Wow. I don't really know why, perhaps because we were so disappointed with the bacon made for us last year, but I didn't expect the bacon to come out actually tasting like bacon.

Last year, a friend said he would brine and smoke some streaky bacon for us from the pig that we had bought, he was doing his own and had a smoker etc. so we left him to it. Not sure what wood he used, whether it was sawdust made with a chainsaw, or softwood, or just too long in the smoker? But it was a disappointment.

So we made our own this time. I dry cured it for about 3.5 days in salt, with peppercorns, brown sugar and crushed bay leaves. 2.5 days would probably have been enough, because we wanted to create a breakfast rasher rather than a preserved pancetta. After curing, it was rinsed and hung up to dry for a few days. In the meantime, I realised that I needed to build a smoker!

There are lots of plans and pictures of smoker designs on t'internet - not so many for cold smokers, but the general principle is that you have a smoke source and a smoky box and separate the two using pipe, so that the smoke has a chance to cool down before reaching the smokee. I had a wee charcoal bbq lying around (fairly redundant after Donal and Nicola bought us a propane one!) and once I worked out how to stick a big tin can on to the lid as a chimney, that was the smoke source sorted. You can get away with cardboard box as a smokehouse, but we splashed out a few dollars for a galvanised garbage can, drilled some holes in the lid, other holes in the side to put rods through, and bolts for suspending a rack and a larger hole to put the pipe in.



The wonderful hardware store in the village, N. F. Douglas & Sons had all the bits, including some flexible hose. It's like tumble dryer hose, but made of a sort of foil, so seems to be heat resistant. Looks like something off a '50s sci-fi B-movie (Plan 9 from Outer Space - anyone seen it?) :-)

Don Kimball, a local furniture maker had given us bags of maple shaving, primarily for animal bedding, and I went and picked up some apple tree branches that we had pruned in early Spring. Using a sharp axe I could make thin shavings and after getting a bed of hot coals from some seasoned oak wood, I put a mixture of apple with a wee bit of dampened maple on top, put on the lid and we were in business.

Half the bacon I sliced unsmoked and the other half went into the smoker for just a few hours. The result is outstandingly good! It really is. The transformation from simple pork to sweet, salty, savoury bacon is only just short of miraculous!

So much so, that we have ordered 2 Berkshire piglets from Ross Farm for delivery around mid-February!