Home-Cured Pancetta

I had planned to make a series of blog posts about my experiments with home cured and pickled foods, but like most things I never got around to it. For Christmas dinner, my father-in-law bought a pork belly that I halved and made into a Porchetta, which turned out amazing!

I had planned on making a slab of bacon and a roll of pancetta with the remaining pork belly from the beginning, so, worthy investment. Now, I don’t have access to a smoker, so the bacon didn’t turn out the way I wanted it to. I also used the Morton’s Tender Quick cure as I wasn’t able to find a good bacon cure that was affordable or available to me. Looking back, I wish I’d have just bought a bag of Cabela’s bacon cure. Next time I will.

Since I didn’t have access to a smoker, I decided to try the low and slow oven method to finish the bacon, basting with liquid smoke. I was hoping that it would at least come out about the same as store bought packaged bacon since they use liquid smoke typically, but I don’t think I was generous enough with the liquid smoke to make a difference. The result? The bacon turned out pretty salty and not very smokey.

Overall, I was a little nervous of the pancetta as it needed to hang cure for a month or two. All the blogs I read and tutorials I watched explained about a lot of the process but most only touched on the good vs. bad molds. Mostly, I noticed people saying anything green and anything fuzzy were signs of bad mold, but there was no definitive answer to that question. I took the advice from my research to occasionally dab the mold with distilled white vinegar to neutralize it.

My main worry was that the mold would spread into the middle of the meat and ruin the entire batch. All of this is caused because I live in a one-bedroom apartment with no way to control temperature and humidity. I found a closet that carried itself around 68° pretty consistently and hoped the humidity was appropriate. I know, what a great way to poison myself and my family right? The mold growth had practically stopped, and it didn’t grow very large to begin with, so I decided to see it through.

They did it in the old days without proper equipment, why can’t I? After slicing it open, I was relieved at how good it looked. I wanted to give a small piece a try and go from there. Unfortunately, we covered the pancetta after I snapped a few pics, which ultimately trapped the mold spores, and it grew rampant. I decided to toss the whole project rather than risk of getting sick, but I learned a lot about what to do and what not to do in the process. Thankfully the pictures came out pretty nice.

I have a strange desire to experiment with pickled, fermented and cured foods, so expect more of these types of posts. Hopefully I can get a good sourdough starter going now that the weather is starting to warm up.