OMG Pancetta – More Charcuterie

Like the waiter at Fogo de Chao once said to me, “are you ready for the meat?”

As you may have noticed, I’ve been on a meat kick, thanks to Charcuterie the best book ever written.  I’m pretty sure I’m going to make every single recipe in here, but I can’t until I get a cold smoker… *day dreams about smoking delicious meat*

Can I entice you with some more pictures of meat?

Delicious pinwheel of fatty pork belly that’s been cured for 3 weeks in my meat basement?

How did you make this deliciously nom? Well let me tell you.

Pancetta
Adapted from Charcuterie

Ingredients:

• one 5 lb slab pork belly, skin removed
• 4 garlic cloves, minced
• 2 teaspoons pink salt (sodium nitrite)
• 2 oz (1/4 cup) kosher salt
• 2 tablespoons dark brown sugar
• 2 tablespoons coarsely ground black pepper
• 2 tablespoons juniper berries, crushed with the bottom of a small pan
• 4 bay leaves, crumbled
• 1 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
• 4 or 5 sprigs fresh thyme
• 2 tablespoons coarsely ground black pepper (yes this is written twice, you will see why!)

Directions:

1. Trim the pork belly so its nice and square.
2. Combine all ingredients above except for the last pepper (I over-peppered mine due to not knowing how to read properly… so I separated the peppers just in case you don’t know how to read as well).  Make sure it’s mixed well.  Rub the mixture all over the belly on both sides.
3. Put the belly in a large ziplock bag or a non-reactive (glass) container just large enough to hold it.  Refrigerate for 7 days – flip it over every other day and redistribute the cure by rubbing the outside of the bag.  (Bag is better than glass container because you can do this a lot easier)
4. After 7 days, check for firmness.  At the thickest point it should feel firm.  I had to cure mine for 2 extra days.
5. Remove the pork belly after it’s done curing, rinse it under cold water and dry.  Use the 2 tablespoons of ground pepper and rub it all over on the meat side (not the fatty skin side).
6. Starting from the longest side, roll up the belly tightly, make sure there are no air pockets (that’s how bad mold forms). Tie it up like you would a roast.  You might want to look at this youtube video on the method – it helped me a lot.  My pancetta was tied like a pro. Alternatively, you can also avoid the rolling and wrap the whole thing in cheesecloth and hang it.  Charcuterie has a great series of illustrations on how to do this.
7. Hang the pancetta in a cool humid place to dry for 2 weeks. Charcuterie recommends that it’s between 50-60 degrees F with 60 percent humidity, like a cool basement. Keep it out of the sun.
8. After drying, the pancetta can be wrapped in plastic and refrigerated for 3 weeks, or frozen for 4 months.

Charcuterie has a lot more details about the intricacies of hanging meat, I highly recommend reading this book from cover to cover because it’s sooo useful.  What if you were stranded on a deserted island, and you somehow wrestled a boar to the ground and had 80 lbs of delicious pork but no refrigeration?  You need to learn how to cure that damn boar by reading this book.

So now you are asking, what should I make with my 5 lbs of pancetta?  Well, I sliced mine and stored half in the freezer.  The other half went into a spaghetti bolognese, and a breakfast dish I will post later.  I may share the bolognese… but it’s so delicious that I’m afraid of sharing it because it would make the whole world fat from eating it every day.  I also “invented” a “bruschetta” with shaved pancetta.  More to come!!