Uncured sliced bacon

hey all!

My farmer sent my order in wrong to the meat processors and instead of giving me pork belly they gave me a ton of uncured bacon. Any ideas what to do with it? I tired cooking it like normal bacon but it didn't taste the best and looked gross lol.

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Brandon_Byrd_40557

If it ain't cured, it ain't bacon. They probably mean that they didn't use pink salt, but used celery extract instead (which is the exact same thing, really). So it's probably actually cured (and therefore probably actually bacon). As much as I love bacon, I've never gotten any direct from a farmer that I actually enjoyed. There's an art to curing and smoking meats that most small processors can't really provide. My main complaint has been that it's never (ever) smokey enough. Sometimes they don't even get the salt levels right. Depending on what, exactly, is wrong with the flavor, you could try a few things. My first suggestion would be to cold smoke it in order to up the smoke quotient and make it more like proper bacon. If it's not salty enough for that, you could do a dry brine in salt and sugar overnight beforehand. Other than that, it's hard to say. Best of luck though!

tshewman

Is it sliced thick? Many thins you could do (like making sandwiches, burritos, lettuc wraps). They will adopt to many different seasonings (see CS pork belly and carnitas). Cook SV for long periods (~8hrs) or use pressure cooker. Nothing like unexpected cuts to make us get creative. Think of it as an opportunity. :-)

Tim_McLoone_80828

It is uncured and fairly thin (think regular sliced packaged bacon). They just messed up and sliced the pork belly instead of keeping it whole. I don't let them cure it for those same reasons Brandon, I like to do it myself

I thought about tying them together to form something of a resemblance to pork belly and SV and/or Smoking.

tshewman

If stuck on the PB theme you could try ying it and curing it yourself. Will have limitations (obviously) but food for thought. :-) Even the Fat duck Inspired PB may work to create some great thin PB. Then of course there's the traditional serve with brussel sprouts, cabbage/krout etc etc.

Tim_McLoone_80828

I'm not dead set on the PB idea but just trying to figure out what to do with it all.

tshewman

I understand the processors near me often do the same unless you buy a 1/2 or whole hog and explicitly say whole belly. I discovered this when I was first ordering from my Pork Purveyor/farmer. So they gave me what I grew up as knowing as side back.....which was just thick uncured bacon (pork belly). It does well in wraps and breaks down quickly if making a pork broth (ham broth if you do cure some). Take he broth and combine it with parmesan (or whatever cheese you fancy) water and you have a ham and cheese broth, with this you can make a gel, add pickled mustard seeds and serve on a crouton as an amuse-buche (ham and cheese sandwich redone). Or, pull a heston and make bacon and egg ice cream. :-) just thinking out loud.