This little piggie....

went into my makeshift smoker about an hour ago.

I am absolutely of the opinion that a life without bacon is not worth living.  I am seriously considering marketing some of those silicone bracelets like those fatuous smug "I have an invisible friend in the sky to watches everything I do and judges it" nutters wear. Instead of WWJD. I'd have EGBWB. (Everything Goes Better with Bacon). Maybe a book. "Thursdays with Bacon".. a "tail" of life, love and loss based on the wisdom of cured piggy goodness. If they can have The Tao of Pooh, why not the Bhagavad-Gita of Babe.

Given my odd predilection for order and ritual, it's probably why I'm not Jewish. Well, the bacon thing and also kosher wine is crap.

But I digress.

The fact that 99% of my cooking utensils are in a shipping container somewhere in the Arafura Sea, AND the fact that I now live on a tropical island with no traditional smoking wood is a mere trifle.

A piffle, if you will.

I haz teh interwebz.

So, after finding out about boar taint, cold smoking vee  hot smoking, I've settled on the very delectable EssJayEff's tea smoking mix.

You can read it.here.

Because I want a long slow smoke, I've doubled the quantities. I lined a dodgy wok I picked up for $10 with about eight layers of foil, added the smoke mix..

 

 I also picked up a pizza tray, Have NO idea how or what pizza is made up here, as I haven't had one yet but this is a non-stick round tray with holes in it. It's a perfect fit on the wok, and will allow  a good flow of smoke over the soon-to-be-bacon.

I then used another pot and inverted it as the lid. It fits perfectly! It's been on the smallest gas jet, on low for about an hour now, and I'm just beginning to smell something akin to burnt toast. I will resist the urge to take a peek, and let you all know how it goes.

UPDATE AT 2 HOUR MARK:

Ok, after much twitter discussion, I put the smoker over the biggest gas ring and cranked up the heat. This is because I took a peek and the meat was steaming, but there was no smoke. After about 5 mins on high, yes, there is indeed smoke!!

In fact,it smelled like burning toast! I panicked a bit. Burning toast flavoured bacon is NOT on my agenda, but I am assured by essjayeff that this is normal.

I couldn't resist the urge to peek and man, it looks and smells unbelievable!!! I took the opportunity to add a few slivers of cassia bark,just to sweeten it a bit.

So it's now back on the small burner, on low and it's smoking away happily. 

Dude, I'm making BACON!!!

Day Three

 

Once upon a time, "Day 3"in my family lexicon, was a day to be feared. A day to look sideways and not make too much  noise. To make oneself scarce and avoid eye contact. I've even worked with people who've diarised "Day Three" as a warning.

But with the advent of the Mirena(tm) and the onset of perimenopause, Day Three has finally been humbled. 

And, in fact, now, might just be something to celebrate.

The above pic shows the next step in my attempt to make my own bacon.

Yesterday morning, when I checked it, the soon-to-be-bacon had dried out quite nicely, except for the bottom, which was still quite moist. So I decided to wrap the whole thing in a cloth, re-salt it and apply some weight. 

Enter:

 As you can see, I've drawn enough moisture out of the meat for it to have enough structural integrity not to sag over a bowl, It's much denser than it was originally, and because I'm a Nurse, it had to pass the sniff test, which it did admirably.

You can see from this photo that the texture/structure/colour of the meat has changed well, and is looking much more like bacon, than like pork.

I've re-wrapped it, added a new layer of salt and a bit of pepper, and I'll check it again tomorrow, I am planning on a five day cure. Tomorrow will be day 4, so we'll see.

Still researching methods and recipes for the smoking, so let me know if you have any tips.

Makin' bacon

I've waxed lyrical about the quality of pork up here. Which is why it's so disappointing when you try the bacon.

It's crap.

Like crap crap.

Like it-tastes-of-mouldy-fish crap.

The general consensus is that whoever supplies the pork for the locally made bacon feeds their beasts on fish meal.

However you dice it (pun intended), it's goddamn awful.

Even the burgers at the Yacht Club become inedible because of the odour of rancid mackerel emanating from the bacon.

So.

I'm going to make my own.

Since my plans to be the Vanilla Queen of Lae have been thwarted by my "gardener", I am now intent on becoming the Pork Queen instead. Although I am sure there are some out there that snickering at that. Maybe I'll just be the Bacon Bitch.

 Take a good wodge of pork belly. This one is free-range and organic which, up here means that its been happily foraging in the jungle on all sorts of goodies. It's nicely marbled and the perfect size for a bacon rasher.

After reading about 40,000 conflicting opinions on do-it-yourself-bacon on the interwebz, here's what I've decided to do.

I dried the bacon thoroughly in the towel, and then used local sea-salt to rub it all over. If you can imagine using the towel like a sushi mat, I placed a goodly whack of salt in a line, against the pork and then rolled all four sides of the slab through it, making sure the salt was evenly and thoroughly covering the meat.

After reading about nitrides and botulism, I've decided for this small amount of non-commercial bacon, to just use salt and pepper. And because everything I own is in a shipping container somewhere off the coast of Samurai right now, I've had to invent. So the soon-to-be-bacon is resting on an inverted saucer in my only salad bowl.  It's in the 'fridge, and every 24hours, I'm going to wipe the meat off, drain any liquid off and repeat the process.

I'll do that for at least 3 days.. maybe as many as 5,and then we'll see.

I am currently researching smoking methods, so if you have any tips, let me know in the comments, please.

Stand by.