What sausage should I do next?

Breakfast Links?

Brats?

Spicy Italian?

BACON!

The bacon is finished cooking and is cooling now. These are some of the photos of the cooking today.

I took the pork belly out of the refrigerator when it was feeling firm (about 1 week, flipping every other day)

Generally in the United States most bacon is smoked, but it doesn't have to be. And since we haven't got the stove top smoker yet... an alternative is roasting the pork belly at 200 degrees until the internal temp is 150 degrees. Ruhlman says about 2 hours mine was closer to 3.

Next while the meat is still hot the skin need to be removed from the pork belly.

After all that is done, let it cool at room temperature and then put in away for use tomorrow morning (or tonight for BLTs...)

Brown Ale Finished

After 2 week fermenting in the Jug and 2 weeks carbonating the bottles the Chestnut Brown Ale is finished. Ended up turning out pretty well.

Brine Recipe

Due to popular demand this is the brine recipe:

The All-Purpose Brine by Michael Ruhlman:

1 Gallon Water

1 Cup Kosher Salt (important that its not iodized)

1/2 Cup Sugar

Additional Optional Seasonings as desired (we used a head of garlic, 2 lemons, rosemary, bay leaves, peppercorns...).

Heat all the ingredients, but not to boil. Then let cool before submerging the chicken, and put in the refrigerator. It's important to keep the chicken fully submerged so use a plate that will fit into the stock pot you are using to weigh the chicken down (make sure there are no air bubbles under it though).

Leave the whole 3 lb chicken in the brine for about 12 hours then rinse, dry and leave uncovered in the fridge for at least an additional 3 hours. Ruhlman says that the chicken skin should feel kind of tacky when you take it out.

Then roast or broil as you normally would. You can add additional seasoning at this point too. It's finished when the internal temp is about 160 degrees.

Bacon!

Dredging the pork belly in dry cure and brown sugar... mmm. In only one week's time it will be bacon!

The recipe is actually really easy, do as follows and you too can have home made bacon (from Ruhlman's book):

1. Make dry cure:

8oz kosher salt

4oz sugar

1oz curing salt (sodium nitrate) usually sold tinted pink

2. Buy 3 to 5 lb pork belly (I used 2.5 lbs though)

3. Dredge (cover and press into) the pork belly with the dry cure (~1/4 cup will be needed) and optional brown sugar. Put pork belly in a plastic ziplock (1 or 2 gallon).

4. Put it in the fridge and wait a week, flipping every other day. (rest of the instructions in a week...)

Brine Chicken part 2

Part 2 of the Brine Chicken. After leaving the chicken in the brine over night and out open in the fridge during the day we cooked the chicken and the bottom line is that it was a lot juicier than chickens usually are. This could have been because we bought a nicer chicken then usual, though...

Local shopping and tree signs

A little plug for local shopping, found up in a tree in our neighborhood.

And another tree sign worth sharing-

spotted just around the corner.