MY LIFE WITH BACON continues, with visit to Kohler, Wisconsin and The American Club; and after a 10-day cure, I smoked, and then cooked homemade bacon.
WE WERE AT THE AMERICAN CLUB last weekend, as a pre-Valentine's Day get-away. Highly recommended, wonderful place. We're going to increase our frequency from one time a year to two.
On Saturday, after a day of hiking in the state park with snow shoes, we had dinner at The Immigrant, an absolutely wonderful restaurant at The American Club. Starter: a bacon-vermouth infused mousse of salmon with shrimp. Simply awesome; pic below.
We had a fantastic brunch in the Wisconsin room before leaving. Get a load of the featured martini! Unfortunately, I wasn't drinking that morning, or I certainly would've imbibed.
A BACON CRIME UPDATE:
Remember that woman who threw bacon at the police? I wrote about her a couple of posts ago. Well it turns out that the judge has DROPPED CHARGES! Are you kidding? The judge says that the police couldn't prove that there were any damages! Since when, if you've perpetrated an assault, that you have to have damages? And what about the consumers who were deprived of that bacon that the woman WASTED? I think there are several victims here. Boo.
ON TO THIS WEEK'S BACON: MY OWN! Ok, I didn't raise and slaughter the pig myself, but I did procure the pork belly from a high quality farm through Inovasi (about which I wrote last week). I took you through my curing process, and now the more fun part: the smoking, the cooking, and the tasting!
After dinner at Inovasi a week ago Tuesday (burger night), Adam provided me with the 12.2 pound pork belly, as I wrote about last week.
Realizing that raw pork, unlike wine or bad news, does not improve with age, I immediately started curing it.
After ten days, on Friday, I pulled the pork from the bag and rinsed it thoroughly, then patted it dry with paper towels. You have to rinse the cure off completely, or the bacon will be way too salty. I saved the skin (upper right) for another recipe; it's in the freezer.
I prepared my Ugly Drum Smoker and got the temp up to 225 degrees. My UDS is made from parts procured from Big Poppa as well as the top from a $40 Walmart grill. Turns out that you can't buy a Weber top separately. No matter; all this is well documented; just scroll back through to about October 2014 and you'll see how I built it. It's a real beauty. Everything I've smoked in it has turned out perfectly.
Placed the bacon on the grill surface with the probe; shooting for 150 degrees internal temperature. Applewood was used for the smoking wood; it was soaked in water for over an hour first. Produced a wonderful white smoke. No trouble keeping temp as it was about 12 degrees outside.
Here's what it looked like at the end of smoking, and then some shots of the bacon sliced. I had to cut it into a few pieces to fit it in the smoker, all 12.2 pounds of it:
Finally, a three-way of the bacon as it cooked. Final result: I cooked up 1 pound 1/2 ounce of the porcine goodness. It weighed in at 9.8 ounced fully cooked and rendered only about 5ml of fat. I may have been too aggressive in cutting the belly skin off, and taken a little too much fat away; no matter; the bacon was just more meaty than most.
I give myself a zero on crispness. Because I don't (yet) have a slicer, the slices were uneven and often too thick. If I could've cut them thinner I may have been able to get some crispness. As far as chewiness, it's probably a 4 out of 5. As for succulence, very low. But the flavor: wow. I give myself 4 out of 5. Very smoky, very bacon-y, nice.
I've shared samples with some of Jack's friends; the feedback has all been positive. One of the boys said "why can't all bacon taste like this?"
See you next week!
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