Sunday, August 16, 2009

this little piggy

Country bacon

IMG_6244

Normal blogging will resume in about a week, I'm still buried in work.

"Pink" in the kitchen ledger means pink salt, i.e. curing salt, which among other effects keeps cured meat pink.

Yes, this bacon was cured with Bulleit bourbon.

Yes, it is awesome.

(The date in the ledger is wrong, since this bacon is from 2009.  Don't ask me how I screwed that up.)

Because the bacon was cured the same way country ham is, instead of with a briefer cure, it's intensely flavorful -- the maple flavor is actually pronounced (and you can smell it when the bacon cooks), as is the bourbon.  It's very salty, and the hot-smoking gives the smoke flavor a real raw edge to it.  The streaks of lean have the sort of flaky texture of country ham, while the fat has the same gamy funk.  Lord, this is some fucking good bacon, especially for something I was winging (you notice there are no proportions in the ledger, I just tossed things together until it seemed right).

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