Just as the sun was setting yesterday–eight and one half hours after I had first placed our cured pork belly in the smoker–the meat registered an internal temperature of 150 degrees. I declared our bacon done. The bacon might have cooked a little quicker if the outside temperature had been warmer than 56 degrees–pretty warm for [...]
Tags: bacon·Charcutepalooza·pork·smoking
After a week in its “cure,” our 6.6 pounds of pork belly has taken on a mahogany hue, is firm to the touch and is starting to look a whole lot more like bacon than raw pork. In other words, it’s time to smoke our bacon. As part of the Charcutelapalooza project, we are following the recipe [...]
Tags: bacon·Charcutepalooza·prok·smoking
Okay, I give up. Why do you leave the skin on the pork belly while curing it to make bacon? That’s the proceedure outlined by Michael Ruhlman in his book Charcuterie, that being the reference for the blog circus Charcutepalooza, which focuses this month on bacon. The first thing I noticed about the skin on the [...]
Tags: bacon·Charcutepalooza·pork
We are engaging the concerns of a hungry planet--slowly--right here in our kitchen garden in the District of Columbia, about a mile from the White House.
What's in your turkey? We killed and butchered more than 80 birds on the farm of Mike and Michelle Klein in Prince George's County. Thankfully, Michelle did the gutting. Unfortunately, Mike bought his turkey chicks earlier than usual and they did not stop growing. Our prize for helping was a carcass that weighed nearly 40 pounds. It barely fit in the oven. Here, Mike is subjecting a slaughtered bird to the "magic fingers," a machine with a nubby, rotating barrel that removes most of the feathers. 
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