Pork Belly Futures ... Economics Of Pork



Your initial investment ...



... yields dividends like these ...

... and these.

Don't worry, this isn't an essay about the stock market.  Just a recap of our recent pork projects ... no, not a critique on wasteful government spending either, hahaha.  With apologies to our friends in the financial sector, butchering and curing your own pork products is much more fun than analyzing the stock market; and with no apologies to bureaucrats, our charcuterie is very frugal.  Nothing gets thrown away except a few bones that have already given up all their porcine goodness.

As posted here:  Plunging Headlong Into Charcuterie ... Homemade, Home-Smoked Bacon, I was lucky enough to purchase three bone-in pork belly chunks recently.  I weighed them after removing the bones from all and also removing the skin from one portion for pancetta, and weighed them again when finished.  If you're lucky as are we to live near some good Asian markets, it's easy to find pork bellies with or without bones.  Once we really master this process, I'd like to start ordering pork bellies from local, organic purveyors to get an even higher quality product, but we'll stick to the less expensive bellies while we're learning.

Trying to compare costs is a bit apples to oranges.  The homemade bacon and pancetta is more expensive than crappy store-brands, but less expensive than gourmet market products.  I think ours compares very favorably to the gourmet stuff.  Plus essentially everything is used, bones, skin, and all, and you know exactly what's in your food.

Bone-In Pork Belly Price, $2.99/lb.


Beginning Weight of Pork Belly


#1  8.55 lbs. (final product peppered bacon)
#2  6.32 lbs. (final product regular bacon)
#3  5.57 lbs. (final product pancetta)


Trimmed Weight of Pork Belly


#1  6.18 lbs. (bones removed)
#2  5.6 lbs. (bones removed)
#3  3.62 lbs. (bones and skin removed)


Finished Weight of Yummy Pork Delicacies


#1  5.96 lbs. peppered bacon ($4.29 per lb. for the pork)
#2  5.41 lbs. regular bacon ($3.49 per lb. for the pork)
#3  3.17 lbs. pancetta ($5.25 per lb. for the pork)

Waste Not, Want Not.  I braised the racks of ribs that I cut off the pork bellies, removed the meat from the bones, and made an al-pastor style filling for tacos and enchiladas.  Even the liquid from braising the pork ribs was so tasty that I froze it to use for braising something else later.

I saved the skin that I removed from the pancetta chunk to be smoked along with the bacon and saved that and the smoked skin and excess fat from the bacon chunks to use for cooking beans or stews, just like you'd use fat back or salt pork, but much more flavorful than anything you can buy.

Although I have most of the cure ingredients on-hand already, there is obviously a small cost associated with the cure ingredients and for charcoal and smoking wood, which I haven't tried to quantify yet.  The only unusual item you'll need for curing is pink salt, which you'll probably have to order online. 

If you're the kind of cook who's considering doing charcuterie at home, it's likely that you already have the kitchen equipment and supplies you need.  You need a really good, sharp knife, specifically a boning knife if you're working with bone-in pork.  It's essential that every serious home cook have a good knife sharpener.  You'll want to use a plastic cutting board so it can be sterilized in the dishwasher.  You'll need heavy-duty 2-gallon zip top bags.  You may want to use rubber gloves.  Although it's not absolutely necessary, it's best to use a food scale for weighing the cure ingredients for accuracy.  And last, but certainly not least, make the small investment in a really good instructional cookbook.  I love Charcuterie by Michael Ruhlman & Brian Polcyn.

Plunging Headlong Into Charcuterie ... Homemade, Home-Smoked Bacon



Check out this peppery, smoky, sizzling greatness!

 I love all things salted, cured, and preserved ... and I love pork ... therefore, I love Charcuterie!

We've dabbled over the years at smoking salmon, chicken, and turkey, and in the more complicated and sophisticated realm of curing pancetta and curing and smoking our own bacon.  I finally invested in this amazing cookbook:

I'm so in love with this cookbook.  If you are enamored (as am I) with the art of salting, curing, aging, smoking, preserving food, this cookbook is your Bible, a must-have.

Although I like to consider home-curing and home-smoking bacon and other delectables to be so 2011, so avant garde, I remember my daddy talking about his youth, when slaughtering a pig was a routine part of survival in rural life.  They would hang the various pork cuts in the smokehouse to cure, and they dropped pieces of the pork skin into hot oil, creating the treasured delicacy "cracklings," like what we call pork rinds or chicharonnes. 

There's a Biblical passage in Ecclesiastes that says, "There is nothing new under the sun."  No words could be more appropriate.  When we smoke our own bacon, we're not reinventing the wheel, folks; we're simply getting back to our roots.

Yummo, look at all this beautiful pork belly just waiting to fulfill its bacon destiny!

I was lucky enough to find large, bone-in pork belly portions.  And as a bonus I got to practice my meat fabrication skills.  I think that's the culinary school term for having a lot of fun butchering meat, meat fabrication.  I removed the rib sections from the pork bellies, reserving the ribs for another use, which I'll detail in a later post.

You only need a couple of specialized items to make your own bacon.  You need pink salt, a special salt made for curing and preserving (look for sources online) and it's best to use a food scale for accuracy in weighing your ingredients (you can find very inexpensive food scales -- I found this one at Wal-Mart for around $20).

Basic Dry Cure For Bacon


1 pound/450 grams kosher salt
8 ounces/225 grams sugar
2 ounces/50 grams pink salt

Bacon


One 3- to 5-pound slab pork belly, skin on
Basic Dry Cure for dredging


Trim the belly so that its edges are neat and square.  Spread the dry cure on a baking sheet.  Press all sides of the belly onto the cure to give it a thick uniform coating.


Place the belly in a 2-gallon ziploc bag.  Refrigerate for 7 days, flipping the bag over to redistribute the liquid that will accumulate every other day.


After 7 days, check the belly for firmness.  If it feels firm at the thickest point, it's cured.  If it still feels squishy,  refirigerate it for up to 2 more days, checking it every day.


Remove the belly from the cure, rinse thorougly, and pat dry with paper towels.  Let the bacon rest in the refrigerator, covered, for up to 3 days.


We made one slab of regular bacon and one slab of pepper bacon.  For the pepper bacon, we pressed cracked black peppercorns into one of the pork belly slabs after rinsing.

Prepare the fire in your smoker and smoke the bacon with wood of your choice, such as apple wood, at a very low heat until bacon reaches 150 degrees.

The easiest time to remove the skin is while the bacon is still warm from the smoker.  Be sure to save the smoky skin to flavor a pot of beans.

Both the regular and the pepper bacon are good, but the pepper bacon is probably the best bacon I've ever tasted.