Year of Meat – 2: Pancetta | Sir Porkalot Qlog

This month’s challenge is salt cure. One of the choices given was to make Pancetta, given as how much I enjoy bacon, and pancetta is described as an Italian bacon, this seemed like a natural choice.

First things first – I must locate me a pork belly. If you are a regular reader, you will recall I wrote a note about his adventure here Pork Bellies .

Now that the pork belly has been obtained, it is trim to prepare it to be pancetta. Using the recipe in this book I trimmed, rubbed & pre-cured the pork belly for a week, and now it was ready to roll. After rolling it tightly, it must now be tied, and tie it is exactly what I had planned [insert evil laugh].

To find a proper place to sure during this time of year should not be too difficult, in my case a garage should work nicely, and hanging a rolled hog belly beside my rolling HOG seemed appropriate.

Now comes the patience…lucky for me, I had a work assignment that was going to take me out of state for a few weeks, and I hoped to return home somewhere near the deadline of Feb. 15th.

Onto Oregon:

That’s right – Oregon, more specifically: Portland, Oregon.

I have traveled quite a bit of this great country of ours, but the Pacific Northwest in one area I hadn’t had much chance to visit, so i was looking forward to this trip. Not to mention I have heard great things about the locally crafted beer in the area.

So with thoughts of Pancetta ringing through my head off I fly to Portland for 3-4 weeks, leaving my hanging meat to air dry without my constant vigil (me thinks wisely).

So while we wait for the pork to dry, let’s take a look at some of the sights I witnessed while in the beautiful Northwest.

But…this post is about Pancetta – so fast forward until Feb. 13th when I fly back across country, just in time for Valentines Day with my wife, but also (most?) importantly is the Pancetta!

O’ wise God of curing, what have you blessed me with while I was on my road trip? After a quick review of the porky goodness in my garage, it was quite a wonderful feeling to take the roll of meat down, into my kitchen where it got carefully untied, and sliced.

After putting a couple of slices into a frying pan to test….a success!!

Now what would be the best way to showcase this beautiful piece of charcuterie? Oh the thoughts flew through my head at rapid pace, knowing I had 5lbs was comforting, because I couldn’t possibly pick just one thing to do with it

In upcoming posts I will make the following porky treats: