another batch of loin bacon

Canugghead

Ruhlman's basic dry cure + bay leaves, garlic and crushed pepper for 8-9 days, air dried in fridge overnight, smoked with pecan and hickory at 200F till IT 150F. can't get enough of this!

shtgunal3

Looks great!

caliking

Gary - you're going into commercial levels of production. Putting all of your toys to great use!

Canugghead

@shtgunal3 - thanks, you bacon look just as nice if not better!

@caliking - thanks, just trying to cover up my lousy cooking/plating skills with toys!

cook861

nice looking bacon if you have to much you send some this way  :(

Canugghead

haha, won't get past sniffing hounds at border security!

BigWader

Where are you getting your loins?  They have such a nice amount of fat (flavour) that those must be out of this world good!

Canugghead

@BigWader - those were fresh Ontario loins on sale at No Frills two weeks ago for $2/lb!  BUT I paid even less than that, with my personalised PC Plus loyalty programme online offer of 40 cents off per $1 of any fresh pork that week, it worked out at $1.20 a pound !!!

I only bought four due to lack of room in packed freezers, divided them up for bacon, Chinese sausages, pork chops and ground pork. 

These bacon can be eaten three ways: just after hot smoking, cold, or fried, with different flavour/texture profile.  I like it best when hot off the egg.

Generally I stock up when I find good deals, yesterday our RCSS was clearing out nice sirloin tip roasts at $3.10 a pound, with my PC Plus offer of 20 cents off per $1, I paid $2.48/lb. We bought two hugh ones, using them for stew, burger, curry and ground.

This is how I justify to SWMBO the purchase of chamber vac sealer 

caliking

Since you have all that beef:

http://www.saveur.com/article/recipes/pakistani-slow-cooked-lamb-stew-dumbay-ki-nihari

I haven't tried this recipe yet, but I love nihari and liked that this recipe is from a home cook (author's mom). I've only eaten beef nihari before, but this recipe uses lamb... should be good either way

Canugghead

@caliking looks good, but we just had beef shanks cooked in the oven box last week, real good btw.  Also, we've been stuck in the kitchen for too long lately and have no energy/inclination to assemble the sophisticated ingredients for this recipe.  Bookmarked for future for sure, thanks. Think we're going to braised the 'stewy' pieces with Chinese radish, and do the curry with our favourite ready-made Baba's curry masala from Malaysia.

caliking

That sounds good too

BigWader

@canugghead - that is an outstanding deal.  I have a PC points card but not getting those offers.  Maybe I need to buy some meat there once in a while to kick them in.

Canugghead

BigWader said:

@canugghead - that is an outstanding deal.  I have a PC points card but not getting those offers.  Maybe I need to buy some meat there once in a while to kick them in.

Yes they offer each member different incentives every week based on shopping profile.  This week I got 20% off fresh pork again.  btw, you need to activate the offers online weekly, and each offer can be used only once during the week, so load up as much as you can in the first transaction! Couple of months ago I bought 8 packs of double rack Ontario baby back ribs @ $2.40/lb.

bayouegger

Sorry if this is a dumb question but when you say "Loin"is this what your are talking about? 

Want to really try this b/c I know my kids would love bacon like this.

Thanks

Canugghead

@bayouegger - yes it is. don't trim off the fat!  btw, dumb questions are those not asked!

bayouegger

Thanks, gonna try hopefully this weekend!

shtgunal3

Just put a 3lb boneless loin in the fridge to thaw. It will go in the cure for smoked boneless chops when it is fully thawed.

SeahawksEGGHead

I've been doing pork shoulders for my bacon.  I'll have to check out this pork loin...

Canugghead

SeahawksEGGHead said:

I've been doing pork shoulders for my bacon.  I'll have to check out this pork loin...

I've tried loin and shoulder (bone in and boneless) and prefer loin because it's more uniform.  Bone in shoulder is hard to slice; not comfortable with long curing of boneless especially if it was already deboned who knows when!

SeahawksEGGHead

I use the boneless, and it's turned out fairly well so far.  I would like to test the uniformity of the loin, seems like it would slice better.  But do you get the long strips, something I could make a bacon lattice with?

Canugghead

My pans shown in first picture are 12 in long, the loins had been trimmed by at least a couple of inches at each end.

BigWader

@Canugghead - No Frills has loins this week at $1.88/lb.  I got a couple but I had a question about your process.  Did you soak them after the brine to take some salt out?

When I've done Ruhlman's recipe for bacon I found it too salty without a 1 hour soak, changing the water after 30 min.

Thanks,

Canugghead

@BigWader - 

Here's a link to my original loin bacon post, it says I soaked 2x 45 minutes. 

http://eggheadforum.com/discussion/1173017/slooooow-smoked-loin-bacon

I used Ready Cure and followed the dosage guide on the packaging, I always felt that it was way too much.  What cure are you using.  These was a recent discussion that says you can just dab the meat on the cure and whatever sticks is all you need (try a search).  Someone even posted he does bacon without cure since it'll be refrigerated/frozen and don't need commercial shelf live.

Was it Ontario or US pork loin you got for 1.88/lb at No Frills?  My PC PLUS loyalty programme this week has an offer of 40 cents off per $ spent on fresh pork, that brings the price down to $1.13/lb! Too much going on these days though, not gonna buy any ;(

bluebird66

Looking so good.

grege345

Big fan of loin bacon as well. Ez. Cheap. Delicious. I used high mountain buckboard bacon cure. Simple

BigWader

@Canugghead - thanks for the link.  That is great.  The pork is US (Smithfield) but had a nice fat cap so I will be leaving it on. 

The next couple of weeks everyone will have pork shoulders and legs on sale for the Italian salami makers.  The Loblaws near me even had a pile of Ready cure and casings and I've never seen that there before.

Canugghead

@Bigwader  last time loin was on sale. our local NF had both Ontario and US Smithfield.

Whole shoulders and legs were on sale at Coppa's (1.49) and RCSS (1.29) last week.  At RCSS shoulders were Ontario, legs were US, interesting. 

BigWader

@Canugghead - Just wanted to share the results of my brine/smoke with you as well.  It turned out awesome!  I didn't follow the Ruhlman recipe exactly (used a wet brine, included garlic, onion. lemon, fresh thyme, tarragon, star anise, juniper berry, peppercorns, bay leaves, pickling spice, etc.  Way better than the belly bacon I've made.  Here are a couple pics of the finished product:

 

Little Steven

BigWader said:

@Canugghead - Just wanted to share the results of my brine/smoke with you as well.  It turned out awesome!  I didn't follow the Ruhlman recipe exactly (used a wet brine, included garlic, onion. lemon, fresh thyme, tarragon, star anise, juniper berry, peppercorns, bay leaves, pickling spice, etc.  Way better than the belly bacon I've made.  Here are a couple pics of the finished product:

 

Looks good man! You know if you cold smoke that you get something called "Canadian bacon"

Canugghead

@Bigwader - Gorgeous, nice loins with perfectly distributed fat pockets!  What curing salt and what salt:water ratio, how many days in the brine, did you rinse? 

Next time I want to try cold smoking too.  It's hard to justify going back to curing bellies!

BigWader

@Canugghead - Thanks,  I'm really happy with the taste.  I'll post the brine recipe I followed plus the add-ins I used when I get to my computer at home.  The brine was great since I didn't need to rinse and people who have tried it have commented that it isn't salty at all.