Homemade Pancetta!

Several weeks ago I purchased a lovely pork belly from my fave producer Irving’s Farm Fresh. Part of the belly was turned into bacon, a portion was roasted as is for a yummy dinner, and the rest was cured and rolled to make homemade pancetta.

Pancetta was something I had never tried to make before but can now add to my expanding list of home prepared cured meats.

I love making these meats at home because I get to, within reason, control the ingredients. I say within reason because there are a few ‘rules’ that I’m not willing to mess with, like how much nitrate or salt is in the food, or whether or not it is raw or hot smoked. Botulism is real people. I’m not willing to mess with it.

As mentioned in a previous post, I am confident making these meats mostly due to a wonderful product called UmaiDry. This groovy sealer bag type material allows one to cure or dry age their own meats within the relatively safe and nice chilly confines of a regular refrigerator. I love it. I should get paid to promote it, but I don’t…

Basically you use the best quality meat you can find, add cure and spices, let cure and then seal (with the help of a food saver type sealer) and leave in the fridge to dry and cure. Easy peasy. Please know that a regular food sealer bag WILL NOT work. The UmaiDry bags are permeable and specially designed for this purpose, allowing the meats to age or dry cure.

Although I happen to love this method, making cured meats doesn’t require something like UmaiDry, it has been made for centuries by European folks just by hanging it to dry cure in a cool space. However, I don’t know that I have a space that is temperature or humidity controlled enough to produce a great result. Some use special curing boxes like old refrigerators with fancy humidity and temp controls, or even simple boxes made from cardboard. It’s crazy how creative people can get for their specialty foods. If you think you might like to try this at home I would highly recommend the wonderful book Charcuterie: The Craft Of Salting, Smoking And Curing, by Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn. It is a wealth of information and was a book I read cover to cover.

My pancetta took much longer than the 6 weeks suggested and never really did reach it’s ideal weight reduction of 25-30% but since it was no longer getting any lighter I figured it was time to call it done and slice it up.

OMG just look at that creamy white goodness!

In Italy pancetta is sometimes served as is, basically raw, in all of its incredible creamy goodness. In North America, it is more often diced and fried, much like bacon, adding wonderful flavour to everything from salads and veggies, to savoury stewed meats.

Because I used the UmaiDry recipe and method, rather than posting a true recipe I’ll just include a link to get you thinking about making your own home cured delicacies!