The Scrabbled: Making Fun of Each Other since '99

This actually wasn’t my first attempt. My first attempt went south before I even got a chance to hang it. I didn’t have any curing salt, so I thought maybe I could just compensate with extra kosher salt. I was wrong. What’s curing salt? It’s basically a mix of sodium nitrite and sodium nitrate that helps destroy any harmful bacteria and thus ensure I don’t poison myself with botulism when all’s said and done.

So the first task was to get some curing salt. Despite my failure, I’m told you can cure meat without it, but it’s considerably riskier and seeing as the environment in my muggy NJ apartment isn’t ideal for drying meats, I went the cancer-y route and ordered some Instant Cure #2 from sausagemaker.com.

Once the cure arrived, I went over to my local asian market to get a slab of uncured pork belly. To my knowlege, asian markets seem to be the only places you can reliably get pork belly — even most butchers will have to special order it for you. It came skin-on, which was fun, cause it was hairy and had a nipple. But that all got cut off, leaving naught but lilly white lard for me to cover in salt and herbs. If your asian market is like mine, the bellies may occasionally still have some rib attached. If so, no worries. Just cut it off and make some BBQ.

I used the recipe from Michael Ruhlman’s Charcuterie book, but the recipe found here on chowhound is pretty much the same thing (and they give you much more detailed instructions, which Ruhlman’s book is infuriatingly sparse on). So the belly gets rubbed with salt and herbs and wonderful things and placed in a ziplock back for a week in my fridge, turning every few days and, without opening the bag, rubbing the cure around to redistribute.

After a week, the meat as much firmer and ready to dry. I took it out, washed and dried it, and rolled it up butcher-style to hang. I’m told that air pockets in the rolled up meat can lead to botulism, so I rolled the thing so tight I cut my fingers on the string. But as you can see here, it doesn’t seem as though there were any air pockets in the final product, so I suppose it was worth it. My pancetta also developed some white fuzzy mold in the creases, but the internet seems to be of the mind that this can actually improve flavor. No one, however, had any suggestions on what do do with the moldy parts, so I just cut around them.

So as not to poison anyone else, I had to taste test them first so I fried up some lardoons in a pan with some roasted potatoes and they were unbelievably good. Far better than any pancetta I’ve gotten in a store. It was saltier with a much stronger herbal flavor, and even the pork flavor seemed to jump out more. All in all, provided I survive the night, it was a resounding success. And considering two pounds of pork belly only cost me $4, it’s a super cheap way to feed yourself incredibly high quality food without too much work.

Tomorrow… pasta carbonara!