Pork Bellies

"jim" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

I painfully placed my order for 15 pounds of pork bellies from Nimon
Ranch this morning. $8.00 a pound ouch. Cant find them here in Ohio.
Does anyone have a kicked up recipie for Panncetta. Ive never made
bacon before and Im looking foward to it.

Peace
Jim

It involves trimming, salting, seasoning and a few months of air drying.
Here's a recipe - I have not tried it myself.

http://italianfood.about.com/od/curedmeats/r/blr0697.htm

Peter Aitken

jim said:

I painfully placed my order for 15 pounds of pork bellies from Nimon
Ranch this morning. $8.00 a pound ouch. Cant find them here in Ohio.
Does anyone have a kicked up recipie for Panncetta. Ive never made
bacon before and Im looking foward to it.

Can't find pork bellies in Ohio? When I lived in Columbus, I
thought it was the pork capital of the world. $8/lb is robbery.
Should be $2. Certainly you could have asked a butcher at any
supermarket...

Niman Ranch is good pork, but for pork bellies the difference in
store-bought would be negligible.

-sw

Steve Wertz said:

jim said:

I painfully placed my order for 15 pounds of pork bellies from Nimon
Ranch this morning. $8.00 a pound ouch. Cant find them here in Ohio.
Does anyone have a kicked up recipie for Panncetta. Ive never made
bacon before and Im looking foward to it.

Can't find pork bellies in Ohio? When I lived in Columbus, I
thought it was the pork capital of the world. $8/lb is robbery.
Should be $2. Certainly you could have asked a butcher at any
supermarket...

Niman Ranch is good pork, but for pork bellies the difference in
store-bought would be negligible.

-sw

I agree. I've never bought pork bellies. When I was a kid, my grandfather
grew his own. A true pork belly has a lot of fat before you get to the
bacon and and a lot of rind. That is a mighty high price for green pork.
You'll lose 1/3 to 1/2 total weight in rind and fat. By the time you
factor in all other costs, you'll have $25.00 a pound bacon.

Maybe you aren't buying pork bellies, but instead trimmed, slab, green
bacon. Even so, if you can buy bacon at the store for $3.00 a pound, why
would green bacon cost $8.00 a pound?

Elaine, too

Cause I wannaa make bacon..Pork Fat lives..

jim said:

I painfully placed my order for 15 pounds of pork bellies from Nimon
Ranch this morning. $8.00 a pound ouch. Cant find them here in Ohio.
Does anyone have a kicked up recipie for Panncetta. Ive never made
bacon before and Im looking foward to it.

Here's an really good pancetta recipe that I've made many times.
It says to dry at 55 F, but drying at normal fridge temps
(<= 40 F) will work fine.

52 kb pdf
<http://home.pacbell.net/lpoli/index_files/Pancetta.pdf>

--
Reg email: RegForte (at) (that free MS email service) (dot) com

Elaine,
I got a wild hair growimg, My Croate father has been roasting pigs on
the grill for ever. I just want to make a statement. I love PIG...

Jim

jim said:

Elaine,
I got a wild hair growimg, My Croate father has been roasting pigs on
the grill for ever. I just want to make a statement. I love PIG...

Jim

I wish you the best of luck, Jim. It should be great bacon.

My grandfather cured (not smoked) his pork. He worked it for nine days.
When he was raising his family, he sold a lot of cured pork. It was his
"cash cow".

Being from the Southern US, pork is a beloved staple of life. There is
nothing that will match slow roasted pork.

What are you planning to do with the rind, fat, and "streak o'lean"?

You can deep fry the rinds. They are yummy.
The fat can be rendered for lard or preserved as salt pork (as can the
streak o' lean). If you leave the fat attached to the rind and preserve
it, then you have "fat back", which can be fried.

Elaine, too

Elaine,

As a 42 year old Croate I have a love affair with Mr Pig. I want to
makke kilbassa and pancetta any recipies would be welcom.

Thanks Pete, good information. I will try this one.

v/r
Jim

jim said:

Elaine,

As a 42 year old Croate I have a love affair with Mr Pig. I want to
makke kilbassa and pancetta any recipies would be welcom.

Jim,

My grandfather never made link sausage.
For some reason, Southerners in the US didn't make link sausages. I don't
know why. I never asked and nobody ever said. I didn't "discover" link
sausages until after I was grown. It seems like most nationalities make
them, yet I don't think I have ever come across an
English/Irish/Scottish/Welsh/Scandinavian/American Indian (which my people
were and much of the South was in the "olden" days) link sausage from
this region made in the olden days. We had bulk sausage that was smoked.
It was wrapped in cheesecloth and packed in a cotton sleeve in about 5
pound lots. The bulk sausage that we had wasn't made from pork bellies.
Like most sausage, it was made from "scraps" from the cutting and trimming
of other cuts from the carcass. Since we didn't make link sausage, we
didn't need the intestines for casings, so they became a food product
named chitterlings and commonly called "chit'lins". (boo, hiss).

Although my grandfather never made pancetta, he did make bacon. Bacon by
any other name..... The pancetta I have seen is bacon made by a different
recipe, so your pork bellies should provide a great base for whatever
recipe you choose.

Keep me updated.

Elaine, too

jim said:

Elaine,

As a 42 year old Croate I have a love affair with Mr Pig. I want to
makke kilbassa and pancetta any recipies would be welcom.

Kako se Jim,
Do you really mean kobasica? I make domaca Dalmatinska kobasica several
times a year. Is that what you are looking for?

D.M.

That seems a li'l expensive. To get an idea what the farmer gets,
check out the futures prices on pork bellies at any financial site. I
think the prices listed are for 100 pounds.

Pixmaker inFLL
==========================
It's not the heat, it's the humidity!
==========================
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You should watch us vote!)
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In article <[email hidden]>,

Pixmaker said:

That seems a li'l expensive. To get an idea what the farmer gets,
check out the futures prices on pork bellies at any financial site. I
think the prices listed are for 100 pounds.

I agree that it's a bit expensive. But I'm guessing a Niman Ranch
farmer gets more for his/her pork bellies because they're
free-ranged, not treated with antibiotics, and raised according to
some longstanding agricultural (not economic) principles. Granted,
once you get through to what little muscle is there, the taste
difference may not be great, but the buyer can feel better about
what they're purchasing from Niman rather than from some farmer
somewhere under contract to put bacon on McDonald's breakfast
sandwiches.

sd