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Tocino (Filipino Cured Pork) | Make Ahead Mondays

July 9, 2012 by 46 Comments

UPDATE: The National Pork Board has generously extended the deadline for The Foodbank donation partnership with you all because you’ve been asking such great questions! In other words, every question you leave for pork producers in the comments on this post, the Foodie With Family facebook page, or on Twitter with the hashtag #sustainablepork will translate to 1 pound of pork being donated to The Foodbank of Ohio. No strings attached!

Pork.

It’s what’s for dinner in one form or another in our house most nights of the week. We are a porkcentric household. That has probably been pretty obvious here with all my use of bacon, chops, roasts, Cuban Pork, Cola Pulled Pork, Hot Tex Mess, and more (scroll down for porky goodness.) So when the National Pork Board contacted me to see if I wanted to take a tour of a sustainable pork farm, I replied with a pretty quick ‘yes’.  Then they contacted me again and made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.

They are going to donate one pound of pork to The Foodbank in Ohio for every question you all leave here for me to ask them when I go on the tour up to 1,000 pounds. Holy cow. Or should I say holy pig?

Just think of how many people we can feed if you all are curious enough!

Let’s talk for a moment about what I’ll be looking at when I head out to Dayton. According to the information sent to me by the National Pork Board, within a 50 year time frame, pig farmers have reduced their carbon footprint by 35%, reduced water usage by 41% and decreased the amount of land needed to grow feed by 78%. Additionally, we are getting more meat from fewer pigs – which helps reduce the use of natural resources to raise pigs.

 The Pork Checkoff has been honoring the sustainability efforts of pig farmers for 18 years with the Pork Industry Environmental Steward Award. The farm I will be visiting on July 24 was recently honored with this award.

So where do you come in on all of this? Just leave me a question in the comment area below (or on Twitter using the hashtag #SustainablePork ) between now and July 13th. All comments and tweets that have questions for me to ask the farmers and the National Pork Board representatives will count and one pound of pork will be donated per question or tweet.

~~

Now I figure you all know me well enough to realize that I couldn’t talk this much about pork without giving you a great recipe for it. That would just be unkind. Without further ado, I present to you one of my favourite freezer pleasers; Tocino. (Pronounced toe-see-no.)

Tocino is a Filipino dish that I have loved longer than I can remember. Starting with a humble and inexpensive pork shoulder (about $1.29/lb where I shop), a little slicing and a quick cure in some sugar and spice in a resealable zipper top bag, you end with a salty but sweet, crisped pork that tastes like super meaty bacon. It doesn’t take much work, and once you’ve tossed the pork with your sugar and spices, you can stash the bag in the freezer for up to six months before frying or grilling. Low investment, mega-payoff.

The sugary salty cure that enrobes the thin slices of pork keeps the mixture from freezing totally solid, so you can scoop out what you’d like to serve for dinner and leave the rest frozen for future meals. The traditional accompaniment for tocino is garlic fried rice and a fried egg for the classic Filipino breakfast called Tosilog. Doesn’t that sound like just about the best possible way to start a day? I speak from experience when I say it makes one heckuva lunch, dinner or snack, too.

Tocino is traditionally cured with red food colouring or other agents (like the pink salt, or saltpeter, used in curing other meats). I’m not super keen on food colouring, so I use beet powder as recommended by Jun-Belen. That man is a genius. The beet powder adds an appetizing red colour without adding any funky insect or chemical colouring. Lest you fear the beet, let me assure you it does not impart any beet-y flavour to the finished product.

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Tocino (Filipino Cured Pork) | Make Ahead Mondays

Tocino (Filipino Cured Pork) | Make Ahead Mondays

Do you love meaty bacon? Give this traditional Filipino, quick-cured, pork a try. An inexpensive pork should gets a boost from the fast-curing sugar, salt and spice combination and yields salty, sweet perfection that is reminiscent of thick cut bacon. It stores beautifully in the freezer for whenever cravings strike.

Ingredients

  • 3 pounds pork shoulder, sliced into 1/8-inch thick pieces
  • 3/4 cup raw or granulated sugar
  • 3/4 cup brown sugar (light or dark)
  • 1 clove garlic, peeled and minced
  • 3 tablespoons kosher salt
  • 3 tablespoons beet powder (you can substitute about 15 drops of red food colouring if you prefer.)
  • 1 tablespoon light soy sauce
    • For Cooking:
  • Vegetable, peanut or canola oil for pan frying

Instructions

Combine both sugars, the garlic, salt, beet powder (or food colouring), and soy sauce in a very large resealable zipper top bag (2 gallons) or a stain-proof container with a tight fitting lid. Close the bag or container tightly and shake to combine ingredients evenly. Open the bag or container, drop the pork slices in and reseal. If using a bag, squeeze the bag to thoroughly coat all of the pork with the sugar and salt mixture. If using a container, use your hands to move the pork around to be sure it is thoroughly coated in the mixture then close the container tightly.

Put the bag or container in the refrigerator and let it cure for at least 2 days before using, but up to 4. Alternatively, you can put the container or bag directly into the freezer (letting it sit for at least a week before using) for up to 6 months.

To Cook the Tocino:

Whether using fresh from the refrigerator or directly from the freezer, remove the amount of tocino you want to cook and let it sit in a colander for several minutes to drain any excess liquid.

You may either grill the tocino over high, direct heat, or pan fry in batches. To pan fry, heat about 2 teaspoons of oil in a heavy-bottomed skillet over medium-high heat. Fry the pieces until cooked through and browned with little charred bits, about 2-3 minutes per side.

Serve, if desired, with garlic fried rice and a fried egg for a traditional Filipino breakfast.

http://www.foodiewithfamily.com/2012/07/09/tocino-filipino-cured-pork-make-ahead-mondays/

Don’t forget to leave your question for the pork farmers and National Pork Board below. Every question you leave will provide a hungry family with a pound of pork!

From July 23-24, I will be attending a tour of an Ohio family’s pig farm with the National Pork Board (NPB) focused on sustainability efforts in the pork industry. NPB will cover the costs of my trip, but all opinions expressed are my own.

 

Filed Under: Accessible Ethnic, Appetizers & Snacks, Breakfast Foods, Charcuterie, Comfort Food, Filipino Food, Freezer Pleaser, Gluten Free, kid food, Make Ahead Mondays, Meat, Rebecca, Recipes, Stretching your dollars Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Homemade Hot Italian Sausage Links

September 6, 2011 by 3 Comments

 

There is a lot of pretty food in the world; Much of it provokes your salivary glands into action when you look at it. But if you lay out a bunch of pictures of beautifully photographed food side by side, the one that’s going to fire me up the most is going to be a perfectly cooked sausage. There is no food that makes me hungrier just to think about it.The snap of biting into it (because a great sausage link always, always, ALWAYS has a snappy casing), the perfectly moist interior, the balance of spices and herbs and the fat.

There’s no getting around it. A sausage needs fat. No fat/low fat sausages = not sausage. It’s true. If there is no or low fat it is simply spiced up ground meat stuffed into a casing. That’s not to say it’s going to be bad, but it is what it is and what it isn’t is a sausage.

For many moons, I’ve made my own bulk sausages (in other words, not in casings) but I’ve had a hankering to stuff sausages for quite some time. This urge, desire, obsession, whatever-you-call it, is the fault of Bell’s Meat Market in Kane, Pennsylvania. When my dad was working at a camp down in the Harrisburg area, Kane was directly on the path between our two homes. En route to or from my house, my dad and stepmom had discovered this little place in this little town that made what had to be the best hand made sausages any of us had ever eaten. Since the drive was well outside of the “I’d drive that far for a craving” range, the idea of making exquisite sausages (not to be confused with the a-okay for every day but not earth-rockingly wondrous variety available at local grocers) firmly rooted itself in my mind.

When Dad and Val moved back to the Upper Peninsula, Kane was no longer on the way to or from and the situation became culinarily urgent.

Then came Charcutepalooza. This “Year of Meat” project brought people from all walks of life together to get all meaty together.  Cooking from scratch? You bet. Canning? Oh sure, everyone has dabbled in that, but preserving your own meat? That was hardcore. And I was all over it. I bought the “manual” for our collective project, “Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking and Curing” by Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn. Reading that book made me feel like the heavens had opened and the angels were singing. There was the answer to my sausage conundrum. I had the method, I had the basics, and I was ready.

I recruited my nine year old minion because he is currently infatuated with the Two Fat Ladies and is willing to do anything and everything remotely connected to Jennifer and Clarissa (and he had watched an episode where they made Bangers and Mash the night before our grand project.) With Ty turning the handle on our old school meat grinder/sausage stuffer and me feeding meat into the hopper and then manning the casings (an admittedly off-putting and slightly blush-inducing job),  we managed to turn out a glorious string of Hot Italian Sausage Links.  To say we were proud would be an understatement. We shuffled around like the Tim-Conway-as-the-old-guy-on-Carol-Burnett saying, “Would you like some huh-weenies?”

Those sausages were not going to be admired for long. We popped half of them in the freezer (for later minestrone or Sunday sauce or some other such project) and put the other half straight into a pot to simmer in beer before their ultimate destination… The grill.

We cut peppers and onions into strips to fry up with olive oil and garlic.

Let’s have a word about properly grilling sausages, shall we? If you throw them on a hot grill and ignore them you’re going to, in all likelihood, have three tragic things happen.

  1. You will have unevenly cooked sausages.
  2. Your sausage casings will explode which will cause tragic thing #3.
  3. You will have dry little sausage jerkies because all the juices and fat will leak out on account of the breached casings.

There is no drama like sausage drama, so let’s discuss how to do it the right way, shall we? This applies to all “raw” sausages, not just homemade ones.

  1. Gently par-boil your sausages in something yummy. Beer, apple cider, wine? All good choices. If you want to know what is best to use, consider whether what you’re using for simmering would be tasty served alongside the finished sausage. If the answer is yes, then use it! The goal here is to get heat moving into the sausage, not to cook it completely.
  2. When you move on to grilling, put the sausages over moderate direct heat to start with so you get nice browning on the outside.
  3. When you have some nifty grill marks and tantalizing browning started, move the sausages to indirect heat (in other words, not directly over the flames/coals/what have you, until it is done through. For these sausages, that is 150°F.

When the sausages look like this, make haste in getting them off the grill!

These were crackling crisp on the outside and juicy on the inside. This is a good reminder of why you want the casings to pop open only when you bite them. All that lovely fat and those intense juices from the meat were contained in the casing.  If you do it right, you get to eat all that good stuff. If you do it wrong, it sizzles out onto the grill and is wasted forever and ever amen. Not to put too fine a point on it or anything, but a dry sausage is a sad sausage.

This is not a sad sausage.

Neither were the other two that I ate. I’m just being honest.

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Homemade Hot Italian Sausage Links

Prep Time: 1 hour

Heavily seasoned with garlic, Italian herbs and spiced up with crushed red pepper flakes and cayenne, this succulent Hot Italian Sausage is worth every effort involved in making it. You can stuff it into casings to make links, or leave it in the bulk form for browning and adding to sauces. Either way, you won't want to go back to store bought after eating this!

Ingredients gently adapted from Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn, but the method is theirs.

Ingredients

  • 4 1/2 pounds boneless pork shoulder butt, trimmed of sinew (but not fat) and cut into 1 1/2" cubes
  • 8 ounces pork back fat, partially frozen and diced into 1/2" cubes
  • 3 tablespoons kosher salt
  • 2 tablespoons white or raw sugar
  • 3 tablespoons fennel seeds, toasted or not
  • 1 teaspoon ground coriander (or 1 tablespoon coriander seeds)
  • 3 tablespoons sweet paprika (not hot)
  • 1/2-1 teaspoon cayenne pepper (depending on how hot you like it)
  • 4 tablespoons fresh oregano leaves (or 1 1/4 teaspoons dried)
  • 4 tablespoons minced fresh basil leaves (or 1 1/4 teaspoons dried)
  • 1 tablespoon minced fresh parsley (or 1/2 teaspoon dried)
  • 2 tablespoons crushed red pepper flakes
  • 2 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper
  • 3/4 cup ice cold water
  • 1/4 cup red wine vinegar, well chilled
    • If you want link sausage you will also need 10 feet natural casings soaked in room temperature water for 30 minutes then rinsed.

Instructions

Combine the pork and the rest of the ingredients (minus the vinegar and water) and toss to evenly distribute the seasonings. Cover tightly with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 1-12 hours before proceeding.

Using a small die or disc on your meat grinder, grind the meat/spice mixture.

Transfer the meat into the work bowl of your stand mixer (or into a very large mixing bowl) and mix the vinegar and water in with the paddle attachment (or a hefty, sturdy spoon) until the liquids are all fully incorporated and the meat is sticky and uniform in appearance. This should take about 1 minute on medium speed.

Pinch off a quarter-sized amount of the sausage and pan fry it to check for seasonings. Adjust if necessary before proceeding.

Thread the casings onto your sausage stuffer and fill, taking care not to overfill but also not to leave air pockets, and twist it into links of your desired size.

Cook immediately with desired method or store tightly wrapped in the freezer.

http://www.foodiewithfamily.com/2011/09/06/homemade-hot-italian-sausage-links/

 

 

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Foodie With Family's Favourite Grilled Italian Sausage with Peppers and Onions

There is nothing quite like a grilled Italian sausage with a hearty dose of yellow mustard and garlicky peppers and onions to make you feel like all is well in the world. I heartily recommend you try our favourite version of this classic!

Ingredients

  • 6 raw hot Italian sausage links
  • 1 can (12 ounces) drinkable quality beer (lager or ale is a good choice here)
  • 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
  • 1 large onion, sliced into half and then into thin strips
  • 2 large bell peppers, green, red, orange or yellow or a blend, sliced into thin strips
  • 2 cloves garlic, peeled and roughly chopped
  • 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
  • 6 hearty sausage rolls or Homemade Hot Dog Rolls
  • Lots of yellow mustard!

Instructions

Preheat half of your grill to high (or build a bed of moderately hot coals on one half of the grill.

Place the sausage links in a single layer in a heavy-bottomed skillet and pour the beer over the top. Put the lid on the pan and bring up to a boil, covered tightly, over medium high heat. As soon as it boils, remove the lid, drop the heat to low and simmer for 1 minute only.

Transfer the sausages to the hottest part of the grill. Cook them, turning often, until they start to become golden brown.

Immediately move them to the coolest part of the grill and let them cook , turning frequently, until they are very hot all the way through (150°F on an instant read thermometer).

Move the sausages to a platter and tent loosely with foil while working on the peppers and onions.

Heat the olive oil in a heavy-bottomed skillet over medium high heat. Add the sliced peppers, onions, and garlic, sprinkle with salt, and stir to coat. Continue cooking, stirring frequently, until the peppers and onions are tender with just a little bite in the center. Transfer to a bowl.

Serve each sausage on a bun, smeared with yellow mustard and piled with sauteed peppers and onions!

http://www.foodiewithfamily.com/2011/09/06/homemade-hot-italian-sausage-links/

Filed Under: Charcuterie, Instructional, kid food, Meat, Rebecca, Recipes

Country Ham Stuffed Dates

March 2, 2011 by 7 Comments

Have you ever had a real country ham?  A proper country ham?  As in salt-cured, hard-wood smoked, aged ham from south of the Mason-Dixon?  If you haven’t, you really need to try one as soon as ever you can lay your hands on one.

Country Ham is a food experience unlike many in the United States.

It’s generally sold unrefrigerated, wrapped in parchment and swaddled in cheesecloth.

Meat: Unrefrigerated, uncanned, and covered in mold.  Aside from bleu cheese, there isn’t a lot of deliberately moldy food sold in our country. But make no mistake, this stuff is safe as houses. It is one giant cut of pork shoulder cured in enough salt to pay all the Roman Legionnaires of days gone by.  It’s smoked.  And then it’s aged.

Wow.

It’s ham the way ham was meant to be. Intense salty ham flavor and chewy texture.  There’s nothing even remotely insipid about this ham.  It demands for you to love it. And I do.  Oh, I do.

Around Christmas, my little sister, jockeying for Best-Little-Sister-Named-Christina-In-The-World status, brought us a Clifty Farms whole country ham when she visited from Virginia. I popped it on a hook in the cellar and saved it for a special occasion*.

*My special occasion ended up being Monday. Just because it was Monday. And I wanted ham. Don’t look at me like that. You try resisting a country ham in your basement.

When you remove the cheesecloth and parchment the scent surrounds you and makes your brain spontaneously combust with anticipation.  Brain combustion. Little known complication to eating country ham. The deep pinkish brown rind, golden fat and salty flesh that ranges from almost black to smoky red are a straight up invitation to take a bite cave-man style, but I wouldn’t advise it.

There are a couple things to consider first.  You’re going to want to soak it long enough to scrub that mold off.  It’s not harmful mold, obviously, but keeping it on there doesn’t really enhance the overall experience.  Most folks soak it overnight and give it a real overall scrub with a stiff brush. For detailed instructions on how to dismember your whole country ham and how to bake it, you can visit Clifty Farms website. Country ham is most commonly served in thick pan-fried slices with red-eye gravy. And that is one very good reason to buy a country ham in and of itself.  But that’s not the only good and righteous thing to do with one of these.

So what did I do with my big old ham aside from standing in front of it carving off pieces and popping them directly into my gaping mouth? If you keep in mind that country ham is pretty similar to a good prosciutto (but smoked) you’ll have a good idea of where I went with it.  I carved the whole thing up and portioned it out to freeze for later use, but saved a bunch of shaved end pieces, the most intensely flavored bits, to do today’s non-recipe recipe.  Country Ham Stuffed Dates. If a festive dish got any easier it’d be laughable. I can see a plate full of these as the most envied appetizer ever or a couple lovingly tucked into a beautiful lunch with tart apples and an aged cheese .

A country ham, may at first glance, seem a bit pricey, but they stretch and feed the masses like no other.  Because of the strength of flavor and the saltiness, a little country ham goes much further than a city ham of equal size. You get several different types of cuts of meat -slices for frying, big meaty pieces for chopping, shaved or chipped end pieces- along with a big soup bone and a lovely smoked hock. It ends up being a fantastic overall value.

Now a question.  Seeing as I have a large amount of beautiful country ham in my freezer I would love to hear your ideas.  What’s your favorite way to eat country ham?  Or regular ham?

If, sadly, you are unable to procure a real country ham you can substitute thinly sliced prosciutto with good results.  But please, for the sake of beauty in the world and food fabulousness, get thee to a hammery and pick up a piece of Americana.  You won’t regret it.

This post was not sponsored, requested or otherwise noticed by the good folks at Clifty Farms.  To my great chagrin, I’m pretty sure they don’t even know I’m gnawing on one of their hambones up here in rural New York.  I seriously believe in their product, though, and think you should all try one of their whole hams at your earliest convenience. If Clifty Farms ever stumbles upon this and is seeking a mighty enthusiastic spokeswoman, they know who to ask! And of course, many, many thanks to Christina for her thoughtful gift.


Country Ham Stuffed Dates

Scroll to the bottom for an easy-print version of this recipe!

Ingredients:

  • Shaved country ham (or prosciutto)
  • Pitted dates (Use the freshest, moistest dates you can get.)

Make a slice, lengthwise, in the date to but not through the center.  Stuff a slice or two of country ham into the open date. Don’t overstuff as the ham is intense and salty.  Arrange on a serving platter.  Store leftovers, tightly wrapped, in the refrigerator.

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Country Ham Stuffed Dates
Author: 
Recipe type: appetizer, hors d’oeuvres, snack
Prep time: 
Total time: 

Serves: 2-4
 

Sweet, succulent pitted dates stuffed with intense, salty country ham. If a dish was any easier, it would be laughable.
Ingredients
  • Shaved country ham (or prosciutto)
  • Pitted dates (Use the freshest, moistest dates you can get.)

Instructions
  1. Make a slice, lengthwise, in the date to but not through the center. Stuff a slice or two of country ham into the open date. Don’t overstuff as the ham is intense and salty. Arrange on a serving platter. Store leftovers, tightly wrapped, in the refrigerator.

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Filed Under: Appetizers & Snacks, Charcuterie, Kitchen Techniques and Hints, Meat, Recipes Tagged With: , ,

Bacon Jam, Avocado and Gorgonzola and Toasted Waffle Sandwiches | My Elvis Sandwich

January 27, 2011 by 14 Comments

WARNING: This sandwich is dangerous.  It is potentially habit-forming.

I apologize for what I’m about to introduce to you. Truly.  Deeply.  From the bottom of my bacon-enlarged bottom.  I’d say my heart, but my bottom’s bigger, especially after discovering these sandwiches.  And that’s a fact. Low-fat?  Heck no. Loaded with whole-grains?  No way. Low in sodium? Er, uh uh. There’s nothing at all redeeming about these other than the fact that they taste so darned good.  Sometimes, though, that just has to be enough.

You might recall the bacon jam post of last week.  (If you haven’t read it yet, hie thee hence and pronto! It’s going to change your life.)

Let me tell you a little story.  Earlier this week, my husband went on a business trip.  The minions, they were crushed.  Then they got surly.  And a house full of surly boys is no place for a tired mama. I thought fast and promised something I knew would turn the tide: waffles for dinner.  It worked like a charm*.  All the stink-eyes brightened up and there was much anticipation. The rest of the day was smooth as an egg.

*Yes.  My children are that fickle.

At four o’clock, I realized something.  I didn’t want waffles.  At all. I wanted jangsanjeok or broccoli soup. But there was no way out; I had used the “P” word.  I was crushed.  Then I got surly.

Then I got inspired.

My hand brushed against the bacon jam while I was reaching for the pork sausage in the refrigerator. Then an avocado and a hunk of Gorgonzola magically appeared in front of my eyes.  Well, they were right at eye level on the shelf, but -hey!- at least I noticed them. That was a minor miracle on that particular day.

Don’t you just love it when food speaks to you? The best things come when you least expect them. I was irritable, I was tired, I was hungry and the happiest sandwich in the world practically fell into my lap. Savoury and sweet bacon jam on toasted, crispy buttermilk waffles with perfectly ripe avocado slices and Gorgonzola cheese stuffed inside.

Great googly moogly!

This is my own personal Elvis Sandwich.  Fried peanut butter, banana and bacon?  Eh, alright. Elvis was onto something.  But if he had ever had one of these he would’ve been converted in an instant. He would’ve started singing.

“Love me tender, love me true.  Never let me go…”

Forget my warning. You need to get yourself one (or more) of these. Right. Now.

I never said I was high-class, that would just be a lie.  Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go make myself another sandwich. I think I’d better stay away from the white bedazzled jumpsuits.

Bacon Jam, Avocado and Gorgonzola and Toasted Waffle Sandwiches | My Elvis Sandwich

Scroll to the bottom for an easy-print version of this recipe!

Ingredients per Sandwich:

  • 2 leftover buttermilk waffles
  • up to 2 tablespoons bacon jam (recipe available here), slightly warmed
  • 1/2 of a perfectly ripe avocado, sliced into strips
  • 1-2 tablespoons Gorgonzola cheese, crumbled

Heat a heavy bottomed frying pan over medium high heat.  Lay the waffles on the surface of the pan and toast for about 1 minute. Flip the waffles over to toast the other side.  Immediately spread up to 1 tablespoon of bacon jam on each waffle. Toast the second side of the waffles until golden brown and crisp. Transfer waffles over to a cutting board or plate.  Sprinkle half of the Gorgonzola over the jam side of one waffle, top with avocado slices, and the rest of the Gorgonzola cheese.

Add the second waffle. Eat. Repeat.

One more time, please let me apologize for introducing you to this.  I do.  I’m so sorry.

What?  No.  I’m not laughing evilly right now.

bwahahahahaha

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Bacon Jam, Avocado and Gorgonzola and Toasted Waffle Sandwiches | My Elvis Sandwich
Author: 
Recipe type: Main, Lunch, Snack
Prep time: 
Cook time: 
Total time: 

Serves: 1
 

Elvis had his sandwich and I have mine. Smoky, savoury, sweet bacon jam on toasted waffles with creamy avocado and melting Gorgonzola cheese. Love me tender!
Ingredients
  • 2 leftover buttermilk waffles
  • up to 2 tablespoons bacon jam (recipe available here), slightly warmed
  • ½ of a perfectly ripe avocado, sliced into strips
  • 1-2 tablespoons Gorgonzola cheese, crumbled

Instructions
  1. Heat a heavy bottomed frying pan over medium high heat. Lay the waffles on the surface of the pan and toast for about 1 minute. Flip the waffles over to toast the other side. Immediately spread up to 1 tablespoon of bacon jam on each waffle. Toast the second side of the waffles until golden brown and crisp. Transfer waffles over to a cutting board or plate. Sprinkle half of the Gorgonzola over the jam side of one waffle, top with avocado slices, the rest of the Gorgonzola cheese and the second waffle. Eat. Repeat.

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Filed Under: Breakfast Foods, Charcuterie, Main Dish, Meat, Rebecca, Recipes Tagged With: , , , ,

Bacon Jam (a.k.a. Oooh-Mommy! Jam)

January 17, 2011 by 101 Comments

You know food is going to make you happy when it smiles at you.  (Probably could’ve made a buck selling a smiling egg yolk on eBay, but honey?  There was no way I was walking away from this breakfast.  And even if I did, there were twelve people waiting to take over the job for me this morning.)

My love of bacon has been pretty well documented (proof of my bacon-obsession) but I can honestly tell you that today’s recipe, Bacon Jam,  is the my favorite way I’ve ever eaten it.

I’m just going to say right here -at the beginning- that this is one of the hardest pieces I’ve ever written.  I’ve flogged my brain for hours, but the fact is, there aren’t enough superlatives to describe how core-shakingly good this bacon jam is. It is umami jam.  It is Ooo-Mommy jam.

Since every way I conceived to ‘splain this jam ends up sounded like a big, fat cliche in my brain (lip-smacking, mouth-watering, etc…) I thought a few anecdotes about the power of this Ooooh-Mommy, holy-cow, sweet-crappy-pappy-this-is-good jam might do the job.

  • While this jam was cooking, a neighbor (who we haven’t met in the three years we’ve lived here) came over to introduce himself.  He didn’t say as much, but I assume the smell drew him since he kept looking over at the stove where my pot of bacon jam bubbled away. He left as a friend.  He’ll be back. I’m sure of it.
  • I was chatting with my friend, Krysta, who lives on the opposite coast,  telling her how the scent of the cooking jam made me want to gnaw my own leg off at the ankle.  She realized she had the ingredients and decided to make it right then and there.  Within an hour she was drooling all over the place.  Ask her.  She’ll tell you.
  • When my beloved, The Evil Genius, tasted Bacon Jam for the first time, his eyes rolled back into his head and he said, “Ooooh- Mommy.”  While my husband is a food guy, those are reactions that he just doesn’t have. That equals spectacular food.
  • We had a grown-up slumber party last night (Okay, not just grown-ups.  Four adults and nine children. The kids were tucked in and it was party time, Foodie With Family style.  We were hard-core.  We broke out the Gilbert and Sullivan and sang along.  You haven’t played a drinking game until you have to take a sip every time someone in ‘Pirates of Penzance’ says ‘duty’!) This morning, breakfast was toasted slabs of fresh homemade bread smeared with bacon jam that we heated in a cast-iron frying pan next to sunny side up eggs.  Our friends and their kids have now moved into our house.

Speaking of these friends…  While we collectively munched our breakfasts, our dear Daytons, Pamela and Jon, helped us hash out just why a Bacon Jam topped piece of toast with a fried egg was superior to the traditional fare of bacon, eggs, and toast.  Jon observed that with Bacon Jam and fried egg on toast, you get the taste of bacon, egg, and toast in every bite. Because of his keen insight, he got double rations and the ability to choose the keyword the next time we all indulge in our Gilbert and Sullivan proclivities.

This post is special for one other reason.  The aforementioned Krysta  happens to have a pretty stylin’ food blog. You have read Evil Chef Mom, right? I really did tease her about the salty, sweet, meaty, maple-y, coffee-tinged dutch-oven-of-joy that I had just created, and she really did inventory her pantry and chill-chest and make her own batch.  We waxed rhapsodic over our new discovery.  And more than that, we decided that we both needed to post this at the very same time, because Bacon Jam turned us into giddy little teenage girls who buy and wear matching Johnny Depp* t-shirts. Hop on over to Evil Chef Mom and read Krysta’s reflections on the recipe.  She tried the recipe using Martha Stewart’s original instructions (using a slow-cooker.)

*Or somebody.  But probably Johnny Depp.  Because he could be the Bacon Jam of actors.  Or not.  But probably he is.

You can join the Bacon Jam Club, Krysta and I aren’t exclusive.  We want the whole world to know this joy.  Just be warned, once you try it, it’s like the mob. There’s no going back.

Bacon Jam (a.k.a. Oooh-Mommy Jam)

Scroll to the bottom for an easy-print version of this recipe!

Inspired by Martha Stewart and The Perfect Pantry

Yield: About 6 cups.  (You can easily halve this recipe.)

Ingredients:

  • 3 pounds bacon
  • 4 large yellow onions, peeled and thinly sliced
  • 8 cloves garlic, smashed with the flat side of a knife or a pan and peeled
  • 1 cup cider vinegar
  • 1 cup packed light-brown sugar
  • 1/2 cup pure maple syrup
  • 1 1/2 cups very strong brewed black coffee
  • 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Cut the bacon slices into one inch strips.  Add the bacon to a Dutch oven over medium-high heat.  Cook the bacon, stirring frequently, until the bacon is browned.  Use a slotted spoon to transfer the bacon to a paper-towel lined plate.  Drain all but 2 tablespoons of the bacon drippings into a heat-proof jar with a tight-fitting lid.*

*Save the bacon drippings in the refrigerator.  That’s too much flavor to trash!

Place the Dutch oven back over the medium-high heat and add the onions and garlic.

Stir well and reduce heat to medium.  Continue to cook for about 8 minutes, or until the onions are mostly translucent.

Add the remaining ingredients, stir well, and drop heat again, this time to low.

Bring to a boil, stirring frequently, and boil hard for 2 minutes.  After 2 minutes, stir the browned bacon into the onions and liquid.

Simmer uncovered, stirring occasionally to make sure things aren’t sticking, adding 1/4 cup of water if it seems to be drying out. When the onions are meltingly soft and the liquid is thick and syrupy, remove the dutch oven from the heat and let stand for 5 minutes.

Transfer the contents of the Dutch oven to the work bowl of a food processor that has been fitted with a blade.  Fit the lid in place and pulse several times or until the Bacon Jam is a spreadable consistency.  Scrape into a jar (or jars) or a container with a tight fitting lid.

Store in the refrigerator for up to one month or the freezer for up to six months!

Can be served cold, room temperature or warmed.

I do believe that breakfast just doesn’t get much better than this…

5.0 from 16 reviews

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Bacon Jam
Author: 
Prep time: 
Cook time: 
Total time: 

Serves: 32
 

Salty, meaty, chewy, sweet, savoury, smoky, bacony goodness. Bacon is crisped and made into the ultimate breakfast spread with maple syrup, onions, coffee, brown sugar and pepper.
Ingredients
  • 3 pounds bacon
  • 4 large yellow onions, peeled and thinly sliced
  • 8 cloves garlic, smashed with the flat side of a knife or a pan and peeled
  • 1 cup cider vinegar
  • 1 cup packed light-brown sugar
  • ½ cup pure maple syrup
  • 1½ cups very strong brewed black coffee
  • 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Instructions
  1. Cut the bacon slices into one inch strips. Add the bacon to a Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Cook the bacon, stirring frequently, until the bacon is browned. Use a slotted spoon to transfer the bacon to a paper-towel lined plate. Drain all but 2 tablespoons of the bacon drippings into a heat-proof jar with a tight-fitting lid.*
  2. *Save the bacon drippings in the refrigerator. That’s too much flavor to trash!
  3. Place the Dutch oven back over the medium-high heat and add the onions and garlic. Stir well and reduce heat to medium. Continue to cook for about 8 minutes, or until the onions are mostly translucent. Add the remaining ingredients, stir well, and drop heat again, this time to low.
  4. Bring to a boil, stirring frequently, and boil hard for 2 minutes. After 2 minutes, stir the browned bacon into the onions and liquid.
  5. Simmer uncovered, stirring occasionally to make sure things aren’t sticking, adding ¼ cup of water if it seems to be drying out. When the onions are meltingly soft and the liquid is thick and syrupy, remove the dutch oven from the heat and let stand for 5 minutes.
  6. Transfer the contents of the Dutch oven to the work bowl of a food processor that has been fitted with a blade. Fit the lid in place and pulse several times or until the Bacon Jam is a spreadable consistency. Scrape into a jar (or jars) or a container with a tight fitting lid. Store in the refrigerator for up to one month or in the freezer for up to 6 months.
  7. Can be served cold, room temperature or warmed.

Notes
The bacon jam could take up to 3 hours to reduce to a syrupy consistency. Just stick with it!

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Filed Under: Appetizers & Snacks, Breakfast Foods, Camping Food, Charcuterie, Component Foods, Condiments, Eggs, Instructional, kid food, Kitchen Techniques and Hints, Meat, Party Food, Rebecca, Recipes, Side Dishes, Stretching your dollars Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

How to Render Duck Fat and Make Duck Cracklins

January 12, 2011 by 10 Comments

“Duck fat!  Hoo ha ha!…*”

*Like Shark Bait, Hoo Ha ha! from ‘Finding Nemo’.

“crackLINS! crackLINS! crackLINS! crackLINS! Duck, duck, duck, duck, duck. NO GOOSE!”  went the chant from my children who  -just two hours before- were making wet gaggy noises while watching me break down a duck into breasts, leg and thigh portions and a hearty pile of duck fat and skin trimmings.

Boy did I change their tune. Just look at those cracklins.  Can you blame them?

It’s now duck town around here, people. I’ve signed on for Charcutepalooza (the brainchild of Mrs. Wheelbarrow and The Yummy Mummy).  At current count, there are about one hundred bloggers participating in this group organized by our illustrious leaders.

Charcutepah-whah you say? It’s a mashup of Charcuterie (The Craft of Salting, Smoking and Curing Meat and the title of the Michael Ruhlman book of the same name.) and Lollapalooza (an annual music festival involving a great many tattoos and alternative rock acts and questionable behavior.)  There will be one project per month (all projects from recipes gleaned from Michael Ruhlman’s Charcuterie.  Meat is mandatory. Questionable behavior and tattoos* are optional.

 

*There are tattoo rumors.  Just how devoted are we to meat?  We’ll see!

 

It’s common knowledge that I live in. the. middle. of. nowhere.  This is by choice. I like living way out here.  But I do occasionally miss the easy access to some of the finer things I crave; artisan meats, cheeses, etc…  So what’s a gal to do?

  1. Nothing.
  2. Become independently wealthy and have Armandino Batali open up a satellite store in my barn.
  3. Learn to make it myself.

With the organization of Charcutepalooza, option 3 seemed the most sensible choice.

This month’s project is Duck Prosciutto.  The recipe calls for two duck breast halves (or one whole duck breast, boned and separated.) Our local meat market had whole, all-natural ducks for $3.89/pound ~or~ boneless, skin-on breasts for $12.89/pound.  Holy moly.  Whole duck it was.  After removing and trimming the duck breasts and beginning the process of curing them, I had most of a duck left to turn into food.

The leg and thigh quarters were a no brainer; salt, herbs, garlic and spices and into the fridge to become duck confit (post forthcoming).  This left a biggish carcass, a duck neck, a bunch of fat and skin, and some offal.  The offal became the teensiest and cutest little old pâté you ever did see.  The carcass and neck jumped into a roasting pan to brown up then become stock.  And the duck skin and fat… Well, that’s where the magic happened.

Slowly rendering the fat away from the skin and little bits of meat clinging to it left us the ultimate culinary two-fer; golden duck fat and crispy duck cracklins.

Duck fat gives you French fries that are good enough to make you religious. To paraphrase Ben Franklin, “Duck fat is proof that God loves man and wants him to be happy.” Cracklins are like refined bacon. Are you hungry yet?  You ought to be.

Let’s get cracklin.

For a photo-free, printer-friendly version of this recipe, click here!

How to Render Duck Fat and Duck Cracklins

Ingredients:

  • 1 pound of duck fat and skin trimmings (You should be able to get this from one duck after you have removed the breast, leg and thigh meat. Alternately, you can hit up your friendly local butcher for duck fat and skin trimmings.)
  • 1/4 cup fresh water

Cut the skin and fat into pieces that are roughly 1-inch in size.  Put in the bottom of a heavy-bottomed pan with a capacity of at least 3 quarts.  A wider bottomed pan is more efficient for this application.

Pour the water over the trimmings and place the pan, partially covered, over the lowest heat possible.  As the trimmings and water warm up in the pan, fat will begin rendering (being made liquid) and water will start evaporating.  This will sound a bit like a gently sputtering boil.

The white fatty bits will slowly transform into lightly golden brown, crispy goodies.  As soon as they reach this stage, use a slotted spoon to remove the cracklins to a paper towel lined plate. The process can take anywhere from an hour to three hours, so I don’t recommend leaving the pan unattended for long. When the cracklins are on the lined plate, sprinkle with salt, to taste, and set aside. These can be eaten as a snack, baked into cornbread, sprinkled over salads or hearty soups like croutons, or used just about anywhere else you would use crisped bacon.

Turn your attention to the duck fat.  For the clearest duck fat, line a fine mesh strainer with a piece of cheesecloth.  If you’re in a hurry, a stainless-steel fine mesh strainer alone will suffice. Carefully pour the hot liquid fat through the strainer (lined if you so choose) into a jar or other clean, food-safe receptacle with a tight fitting lid.  Fit the lid in place and store your liquid gold in the refrigerator for up to a year.  It will become semi-solid and opaque in its chilled state, this is to be expected. Use duck fat to roast potatoes, make the ultimate French fries, sear or confit meats, or whatever sinful tasks you devise for it.

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Filed Under: Charcuterie, Component Foods, Food Preservation, Instructional, Kitchen Techniques and Hints, Meat, Rebecca, Recipes, Snacks, Stretching your dollars Tagged With: , , ,