BACON UPDATE

Last year, I posted my first experience with making bacon at home, starting from a pork belly purchased from COSTCO.   I posted a basic recipe that I found online, and my results.  

It's better now!

You'll need: 

Pork Belly.  Two bellies here because people have requested bacon to take home.

Pink curing salt

Kosher salt 

Brown sugar

Maple sugar

Cocoa powder

Instant coffee

Garlic powder

Onion powder

Baking sheet with a rim

Vacuum sealer OR gallon-size ziploc bags

Kitchen scale

Medium-sized kitchen bowl.

Cooling racks.

Ok, got all that?

Let's review the math: 

FIRST convert the pounds and ounces on the meat wrapper to grams.  "hey siri, convert Xlbs Xoz to grams."  

for brown sugar and salt, you'll take 2% of the total weight of the pork belly:

That's WEIGHT IN GRAMS x .02 = GRAMS OF SALT and GRAMS OF BROWN SUGAR

You're weighing the salt and the brown sugar separately.  

for curing salt, you'll take .25% of the total weight of the pork belly:

That's WEIGHT IN GRAMS x .0025 = GRAMS OF PINK CURING SALT.

 

Mix all that in your medium-sized kitchen bowl.

Now, add ONE TABLESPOON EACH of maple sugar, cocoa powder, instant coffee, garlic powder. Add ONE TEASPOON onion powder.

Mix everything together.  You might want to use a fork to break up clumps of brown sugar.

 Put the cure mix into that rimmed baking sheet.

 

 Get your vacuum sealer and gallon-sized bags ready.

 

 Fold a cuff on each bag.  That way, when you put your pork belly in there it doesn't smear all over the sides of the bag.  You might not care, but who knows how picky your spouse might get about pork juice in the fridge?

 

If you want to cook your entire pork belly in one piece, you can do that.  I prefer to cut it into thirds.  Short fat thirds, not long skinny thirds.  I do this so each piece will fit into my vacuum sealer bags, and no other reason.  So, here's a third of a pork belly, in the cure mixture.  I flip it over, and make sure I stand it on all four edges to completely cover the meat.

That's sealed up, ready for the fridge, where they'll sit to cure for seven days.  Turn them daily to make sure all that juicy goodness circulates.

It's a week later.  Remove the meat from the vacuum bags and RINSE EACH PIECE THOROUGHLY IN THE SINK.  Pat it dry with paper towels.  Get the blue paper towels from AutoZone.  Seriously: they don't leave paper towel fuzzies on the meat.

You might wanna rinse those bags out before you put them in the trash, unless tomorrow is trash day.  I just happen to know.

All dry? Then we're ready for the smoker.  Personally, I start from a cold smoker because I'm lazy.  I set it to 200F.  I use a wireless temperature probe in the thickest piece of pork belly.  

Get your cooling racks ready.  I put them on baking sheets to catch the drips, but paper towels will be just fine. There WILL be drips.

You'll pull it off at 145F and let it cool on those racks to room temperature.

Your bacon has cooled a bit, and you're excited to try some!  You've waited a week, so you can wait another hour or two.

It will slice more easily if you let it chill in the refrigerator for an hour or so after it cools to room temperature.  

I recommend slicing across the short end.  Slicing long-ways you'll end up with bacon burnt in the middle and not done enough on the outside.

Sorry...not all of the bacon made it to the serving plate.

I put one third of the bacon into a ziploc bag in the refrigerator.  The other two thirds go back into vacuum sealed bags, get dated on the bag in Sharpie, and put in the freezer.

Double Chocolate Cinnamon Nesquik Cookies

I wondered what would happen if I added Hershey's syrup to my cookie dough, and rolled my cookies in Nesquik before I baked them. So I tried it.

I'm using the traditional Toll House cookie recipe that you'd find on the back of a bag of Nestle's chocolate chips as my starting point. I've made that recipe dozens of times, and I know it works.

I've got Nesquik, Hershey's Special Dark Syrup, white sugar, brown sugar, AP flour, baking powder, Hershey's Special Dark chocolate chips, some leftover Hershey's cinnamon chips, two sticks of butter, two eggs, and pure vanilla extract.

Cream butter, sugars, eggs, and vanilla, just like the original recipe.  And...I added 1/3 cup Hershey's Special Dark Syrup to the mix.  

The dough was too wet and sticky, so I added 1/4 cup more flour to soak up the extra moisture I'd added with the syrup.

 I've added the entire bag of dark chocolate chips, and 1/4 cup of the cinnamon chips.

OK!  I got cookie dough, now.  Next step is to roll each dough-ball in the Nesquik.

Each cookie dough-ball is probably about 2T of dough, give or take.  It was really soft and sticky, so I couldn't get them as small and uniform as I prefer.

They came up nicely, though, after about 12 minutes at 375*F.  I have the baking sheet on a cooling rack for two minutes before I remove the cookies with a sharp metal spatula.

As they cool, they'll flatten out a little bit more.

Here we are!  They have a nice, mild crunch to the surface, and still soft on the inside.

The syrup in the dough was nice, but when added with the richness of the dark chocolate chips they were maybe a bit over the top.  The cinnamon chips didn't add as much zip as I'd thought they would.  Still, decadent is always good! 

The Nesquik was an interesting touch. I might try that again without the syrup in the dough.

If you give this a try, I'd love to hear about it!

Garlic-Tarragon Pork Chops with a balsalmic-apricot demi-glace

served with smoked carrots, red onion, and garlic

 Boneless thick-cut pork chops

fresh garlic

dried tarragon

extra virgin olive oil

balsamic vinegar

salt and pepper

  I've put the garlic through a garlic press, added dried tarragon, fresh-ground salt and pepper, and olive oil.  This is going to sit for a while and I'm going to work on the side dish.

I like to cut the carrots on a bias, 'cause I'm fancy like that.  Onions I cut in half, and then slice off wedges.  Garlic got the ends removed and went in whole.  I'm adding fresh-ground salt and pepper, cumin, this insane seasoning blend, and tarragon.  That all gets tossed in maybe 2T olive oil.

 

 Vegetable medley goes on the smoker at 450*.

Pork chops go into the pan with the rest of the marinade.  After the second turn, I'm adding a stick of butter and basting the chops every couple of seconds.

Veggies have a nice char to them after a little over 30 minutes, so I brought them in.

I used about 3T balsamic vinegar to scrap off the goodness from the pork chops, and then added the rest (about half a jar) of the apricot preserves that had been sitting in the door of the fridge for...well, for a while.

Life is good, dinner is better!

 

 

 

 

Smoked Pumpkin Cheesecake with Gingersnap Crust

 

 When people start raving about pumpkin spice this and pumpkin spice that, what they're actually excited about is the spice, not the pumpkin.  The same spice blend works as well in an apple pie as it does in a pumpkin pie.  You know what's even better than pumpkin pie?  Pumpkin cheesecake.

For my crust I'll be using a stick of melted butter, 12 oz of Ginger Snap cookies, 3T of brown sugar, and 1t of pumpkin pie spice.  For the cheesecake, I'll be using 4 bricks of cream cheese, three eggs, a can of pumpkin, 1/3c heavy cream (I forgot to put that in the picture) 1T pumpkin pie spice and 1t vanilla extract.

I like to get my dry ingredients going first, and then pour in the melted butter.  I want a texture like wet sand.

I want to press the crust mixture tightly into the springform pan, getting some of it up the sides.  It needs to bake at 350* for at least 8 minutes.  I checked it at 8, and gave it 3 more minutes.  This lets the sugar and butter and cookie bind into a crust.

 

 

 

 

Four bricks of cream cheese. Adding 1/4 cup brown sugar…

 

 …1 cup white sugar…

 

 Let that blend for a couple of minutes while I pull the crust out of the oven to cool.

Back to the batter! I'm adding a whole can of pumpkin puree!

Once that's mixed in, I'm adding my three eggs..

...my 1/3 cup heavy cream...

...1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract...

...1 Tablespoon pumpkin pie spice...

 

Smooth as silk! Batter up!!

I kinda spun the pan and tapped the sides to get any bubbles to come to the surface.

This is going on the smoker at 250*F.  I'll check it after an hour and 45 minutes.

...after a little over two hours, it had the firmness I wanted, measured by jiggling the pan.

Plated and ated.

Total prep time on this was less than thirty minutes.  I used the smoker because doing a water bath seemed daunting and I wasn't willing to put in the effort of learning how to do one.  I've made cheesecake on the smoker before, so I knew what to expect and I knew that it was a gentle enough heat to keep the top from cracking.