Tag Archives: preserving

November 16, 2012

Guest Post: Home Cured Bacon

Today’s post is from the sweet Lucy at OffallyGood. In the last year, Lucy has been investigating the extent and impact of meat consumption, and all the issues surrounding eating meat ethically. She has, in fact, spent most of this year eating offal in place of more standard cuts of meat, and creating new and interesting recipes with it. She also cooked a whole pig’s head once. He was called Arthur. She is also consuming the correct amount of fruit and veg as any health-conscious adult should, and is at the time of writing starting to learn about sustainable fish: what kinds they are, where the acceptable fishing spots are round the world and other factors that you or I might never think about. She is also a Superhero Numismatist and as such is extraordinarily busy. I”m really grateful that she would take time out to write me this guest post, and would encourage you to pop over to OffallyGood when you’re done here.

Thanks for letting me guest-post, CA, I will mostly be discussing how to cure your own bacon at home…

Curing your own bacon

There! I said it. The B-word. Bacon.

This year of 2012, I took it upon myself to exclude regular and ordinary meat from my diet, in order to relieve my holistic meat debt. Too many chicken breasts had been chomped and too many pork chops over-grilled. Now was time to get friendly with the kidney and love the liver. Great fun and full of interesting ethical dilemmas. But no bacon. Not a single rasher.

So I did what any sane and sensible person would do after nine months baconless. I cracked. And cured my own pork belly into an imitation of streaky bacon. More like pancetta really.

The inspiration from this came from the blog Plate Britain, where the unenviable task is to eat only things grown on these shores for a year. British bacon a-go-go! I couldn’t believe how easy it sounded, so took it upon myself to have a go. The results were awesome (isn’t all bacon awesome), but I feel I still undertook it in a pretty sensible and boundary-flexing manner.

First of all to the belly pork. It was reduced in the shop and I intended to freeze it for when I can be all meaty again. But, then, bacon. One of the farms that produces this very Waitrose pork is in Norfolk near where my Mum lives and the pigs do look very happy in the fields, so I didn’t have a conscience about buying it. It may not be organic, but I have definitely seen the pigs playing kiss chase in the field.

Curing meat is it appears kind of easy. Mostly you rub it with salt repeatedly. It is the making of the cure that turns belly pork into something spectacular!

Do look at Plate Britain’s recipe because I amended it to suit the ingredients I had. My cure was made up of:

350g salt (the cheap stuff)
150g granulated white sugar
10g agnus castus spice crushed in a pestle and mortar
Several sprigs of lovage, ripped up, with some rosemary too.

It looked like this:

Basically what you then do is coat it in the cure every day. Keep it in a Tupperware in a cool dark place – I used the fridge. The cure makes a lot of liquid leak out the meat, so you need to tip that away when you re-cure the meat each day. I cured my belly for seven days. Then you wash the remains of the cure off and you have bacon. Pretty salty bacon. Pretty delicious bacon. If you have cure left that hasn’t touched the meat, keep it for next time you get down on the curing!

Doesn’t that look effing amazing? And it is sooooooooo simple to do. I chose lovage, because I love it and am super proud of the plant in my garden. I chose agnus castus (chasteberry) seeds because they taste like a fruity black pepper. Mostly they were both chosen because they are new herbs to me. I am a sucker for novelty.

I was soooooo excited for the bacon, I had a fry up! I put maple syrup on the bacon. Heaven!

Even better, however, was the toad in the hole I made with the bacon cubes in.

I even did a decadent thing and just fried some and mixed it with some olives and cheese! So salty! So good!

However, flushed after my baconing success, I did feel a bit bad. The idea was offal for a year, and despite my best ethical endeavours – it was really a little bit of a cheat. However, I do now know how easy it is to cure stuff. Could you cure a kidney do you think? I might do some experimenting, so keep checking OffallyGood.

Making bacon is really easy, so next time you go to the overpriced pancetta, pick up some belly pork and have a go at home. FYI when it fried NONE of that suspicious white shiz came out! What does that tell you?

Thank you Lucy – it has taken me twice as long as it should to upload this post because I just kept looking at the photo of the cured bacon. Amazing, and you do make it sound easy. Really well done pet, and I cannot wait to see you soon and chat about all things food and drink several drinks. Huge bacony love x

2 comments | tags: bacon, curing, home curing, offal, preserving | posted in British food, Dairy free, Gluten free, Original recipes, Other people's recipes

October 22, 2012

Boozeberry Jam

By Rock Salt

Do you remember when I made blueberry gin cordial? And took it to a music festival and fell in a ditch? Well, what do you think became of the blueberries once they were fished out of the gin (and I was fished out of the ditch)? I made them into jam, of course!

Now, one of the first rules of booze is this: if you have a drink that contains pieces of fruit, don’t eat the fruit. Never eat the fruit. That innocent fruit has been soaking up more booze than a Scot at a wedding (I speak from personal experience), and is now utterly lethal. If you eat that fruit, it’s like having a tequila slammer you can chew. Never, ever eat the fruit.

That said, I couldn’t possibly have thrown these gorgeous, boozy blueberries in the bin. Look at them – so plump and purple. Dangerous little jewels, they were, and all the more dangerous for looking so tempting. They smelled glorious, too – sweet and full of juniper. It took absolutely no stretch of the imagination to see that they would be the perfect jam fodder. They were also puggled (or, if you have a less imaginative language than Scots on your side, drunk) enough to keep in that jar, in the fridge, for a couple of weeks without any further preserving. I did think I heard some singing from them but I may have been imagining it.

I added some fresh, non-boozy blueberries to them, to boost the amount of end product and to temper the alcohol levels. I put all the berries in a pot with a generous measure of that old favourite, jam sugar, and simmered until the berries had started to burst and release lots of dark indigo juice. Once this had happened, I poured the contents of the pot into jug and blitzed with a stick blender until mostly smooth, with occasional unexploded blueberries. I returned to the pot and simmered until thick and very syrupy, then poured into a clean jar to cool down.

I would like to give you the proper recipe for the jam, but I’ve had ‘lost envelope syndrome’ again and don’t know exactly what I put in there… However, here is my best guess to make one 500ml jar:

450g blueberries from gin cordial
150g fresh blueberries
1 tbsp blueberry gin cordial (or plain gin, or water)
1 cup jam sugar

Put all the ingredients in a large pot over a medium heat and cook, stirring often, until greatly reduced and very liquid, about ten minutes.

Pour the contents of the pot into a tall, glass jug (do *not* use a plastic one) and blend with stick blender – or place in a blender jug and process, but check what your blender’s maximum temperature capacity is.

Return to medium heat and simmer, stirring infrequently, for another ten minutes, until thickened and jammy, Remember that it will thicken as it cools. Pour into a glass jar to cool before storing in the fridge.

The resulting jam combines the sweet-tart flavour of blueberries with the sugary taste of a cordial, plus the mildly astringant, floral fragrance of a good gin. It’s unlike any mass-produced jam or marmalade, and it’s probably not for kids… Even though you do cook out the alcohol, I can’t help but feel that some remains in the end result. Toast and jam for breakfast might be ill-advised with this particular jam.

In light of the development of this recipe, I will revise my wisdom about boozy fruit thusly:

Never eat the fruit, unless you turn it into jam first. And even then, don’t eat it for breakfast.

14 comments | tags: cooking, jam, preserving | posted in Condiments, Confectionery, Dairy free, Original recipes, Snacks, Vegan, Vegetarian

October 12, 2012

Korean Pickled Jalapenos

By Rock Salt

A very short post today, to round off a week that has been dedicated to chilis in various guises. This is a recipe I tested for Leite’s Culinaria a couple of months ago, and I was pleased to see it had made its way to the site. The author of this recipe tells us that these pickled chilis are an example of banchan, which is the name for the small side dishes of a Korean meal. Banchan includes other pickled vegetables, stir fried dishes, soup dishes – there is a great variety. I will admit to not using these little beauties on absolutely everything, as so many of my fellow testers have been, but they have made an excellent snack and they featured in my not-proper banderillos, along with Silver and Green olives and anchovies. They are so easy to put together, and a good way to prolong the life of any particularly fine chilis you see on your travels.

The recipe suggests keeping them for two weeks. Truth? Mine have been in the fridge for a good couple of months, and they’re fine. We all make out own decisions on food safety, and the risk factor here is pretty low from where I’m standing. I am considering trying to seal some of them up properly, but I think I’d have to heat them and this might make them soggy, whereas now they’re lovely and crunchy.

The pickling liquid is a mix of soy, vinegar, sugar, citrus juice and that traditional Korean ingredient, Sprite. Yes, that’s right, the fizzy drink. I would be interested to try out the recipe without sprite, just using more fresh citrus and sugar, but you can’t argue with the novelty value. If you’re already a Sprite drinker, there’s no great hardship in sparing a wee drop of it for these pickles – if you’re not, you could try out an alternative version, I’d love to her how it went!

If you’re not into chili, maybe this isn’t the recipe for you – though you can, of course, de-seed them before pickling. The soy, garlic, sugar and Sprite (yup) make a really tangy marinade and impart tons of flavour to the chili rings. You can serve them on sandwiches or burgers, in omelettes or scrambled eggs, as a side dish with rice, threaded onto skewers with other savoury items, in stir fries – they truly are a multi-purpose pickle.

You can find the recipe here.

2 comments | tags: banchan, chilis, pickles, pickling, preserving | posted in Condiments, Dairy free, Gluten free, Korean food, Other people's recipes, Snacks, Spicy food, Vegan, Vegetarian

October 10, 2012

Smoked and Dried Habaneros

By Rock Salt

As you will now if you’ve visited these parts before, I am into preserving at the minute, in particular smoking and drying. When I saw these gorgeous Habaneros on a trip to Whole Foods, I had to bring the best of the bunch home, and since I would never use six Habanero peppers in the time it would take them to get past their prime, I decided to fire up the smoker.

I started by giving them an hour in the stove top smoker, over a mix of pine cones, assorted herbs and tea leaves, dampened with a little water to create the necessary smoke.

Since it’s a hot smoker, the process also cooks the peppers, leaving them soft and fragrant.

I could probably have pureed them up at this stage into a super-potent hot sauce, with the addition of some vinegar and sugar. I decided to go one stage further though, so I’d have Habaneros on demand for a while. I put them in the oven at 100C, with a wooden spoon wedged in the door to leave it open just a crack. This lets out any moisture and humidity, and helps the chilis dry better.

After two hours in the oven, the chilis were mostly dried. Not completely, especially the big one, but on their way. I took the decision to let them finish off drying au natural, just by leaving them out in the air. Now they are preserved! I have this notion to collect and dry lots of different kinds of chilis, and string them together into a ristra, like you see in proper kitchens. I like the idea of having a mix of chilis on hand whenever I fancy them, and being able to hang them up somewhere out of the way instead of trying to find drawer space, which is in increasing demand in the Rock Salt kitchen…

Another thing I could do with them is to make a new batch of ultimate chili powder, trying different ingredients in this one. Habanero, orange and rosemary, maybe? That’s just off the top of my head, you understand.

What do you think? What would you use smoked and dried chilis for?

4 comments | tags: chili, dried chilis, drying, Habanero, preserving, smoking | posted in Dairy free, Gluten free, Healthy, Original recipes, Spicy food, Vegan, Vegetarian

October 8, 2012

Chili and Tamarillo Jam

By Rock Salt

I made this jam to send to my Foodie Penpal last month, Stacey. She told me she loved sweet chili, and I’d seen a few jars of chili jam doing the rounds lately, so I thought I’d try my hand. As I shopped for the ingredients, I came across some tamarillos, which is a fruit I’ve been eyeing up but not buying for a while now. The info in the shop said that they were tart and a little bitter, and good for chutnies. They sounded like just the thing to put in a lovely, sticky, sweet and hot jam, so I bought a couple.

Here is what tamarillos look like:

You can tell from the last photo that these ones were very ripe; probably on the edge of usability, in honesty. The skin was a little wrinkled and the fruit was very soft when I picked it up, like a very ripe tomato. In fact, tamarillos are related to tomatoes – third cousins or something. They’re part of the nightshade family (a family you wouldn’t want to go to Sunday dinner with), which includes potatoes, tomatillos, aubergines and tobacco as well as deadly nightshade and the delightfully eldritch Mandragora. Thus ends our botany lesson.
This is what they look like inside:

Rather attractive, don’t you think?

So, now that we have learned all about tamarillos (except how to pronounce it, that I’m still not sure about), let us learn about chili and tamarillo jam. I wanted it to have a good strong spicy flavour, but also to be sweet. also I wanted a smooth finish with flecks of chili seed throughout, which I’m glad to report happened naturally. I did some research of other recipes available online, most of which used either tomatoes or peppers as the base ingredient. I decided to supplement the tamarillos with some pointed red peppers, which are usually very crunchy and sweet, instead of normal bell peppers, which can be a bit on the uninteresting side and can disappear into foamy red water when you puree them.

Here is the recipe for Chili and Tamarillo Jam – makes about 250ml:

2 ripe tamarillos
2 pointed red peppers
2 cloves of pickled garlic
2 scotch bonnet chilis
1 cup of jam sugar
2 star anise

I started by peeling the tamarillos – this was easy, the ripe flesh came away from the skin no problem, and fell apart in my hands. I chopped up the biggest chunks, and left the seeds in the mix. I also hopped and de-seeded the peppers, and roughly chopped the chilis, also leaving the seeds of these in place.

I put all the prepared fruits and the quickly sliced garlic into a pot over a medium high heat, then tipped over the sugar. Jam sugar, otherwise known as preserving sugar, contains pectin to bind your jam together. You can buy pectin separately, too, and that is something I will do some research on. I don’t have a special preserving pan, but I manage to get reasonable results without it. Use a bigger pan that you think you need, because this will help to draw off the water from the fruit and thicken your jam. Plus it’s always good to have some splash room.

I stirred everything together and let it come up to a boil. The fruit broke down very quickly, and after five minutes I had a kind of fruity soup bubbling in the pot. I added the star anise to the soup, and let it simmer briskly for ten minutes.

After the ten minutes, it was starting to look more like jam: syrupy, with bubbles forming and holding on the surface. I poured it out of the pot into a tall glass jug, and removed the star anise with a spoon, ready to be added back in again later. Then I used a stick blender to reduce everything to a smooth paste, complete with decorative chili seeds. I returned this to the pot, with the star anise, and bubbled for a further ten minutes, stirring occasionally to stop it from burning.

Now the surface of the jam started to look dry and form a skin. This was unexpected, and I decided this meant it was ready, and removed it from the heat. I removed the star anise and let it cool at room temperature.

This jam is soft set, and if you wanted a thicker jam you could add more pectin or boil for longer after pureeing. At first I was disappointed and considered re-processing it to give a more firm result, but on inspection I decided that it would be fine as it was – easy to spread, easy to add into recipes by the spoonful, but not so soft that it would run off a cracker if you happened to want to try some of the jam with cheese. Which you should, by the way.