Saturday 26 March 2011

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.

3 comments:

Griffin said...

One main tip o Queen of Vanilla Pork, beware the terrible appetite and knack of opening fridges of the dreaded ninja puppeh... oh and also...not good in a roll up. Baccy yes, pork... not so much.

cloudcontrol said...

Wow that's so cool! I wonder if I can make duck bacon like that? Are you covering the belly slab, or is the intention to let the fridge dry it out?

purple goddess said...

well, I wasn't covering it, just letting the 'fridge do it's thing, but yesterday, the bottom as a bit wet. All my kitchen utensils are in a cargo container somewhere, soI am working with what Igot, and I don't have a rack. So I was worried about the bacon getting slimy. So I wrapped it in a clean towel and put a couple of cans of dog food on it to press it. Will post pics.