Recipe of Award-winning Home Made Pancetta

Hey everyone, it is Drew, welcome to my recipe page. Today, I’m gonna show you how to make a special dish, home made pancetta. One of my favorites. This time, I’m gonna make it a bit unique. This will be really delicious.

Home Made Pancetta is one of the most popular of recent trending foods on earth. It’s easy, it’s fast, it tastes yummy. It is enjoyed by millions daily. They are nice and they look wonderful. Home Made Pancetta is something which I’ve loved my entire life.

Homemade pancetta is incredibly easy to make. Using the freshest, and best quality pork belly that you can find is the most important criteria, the rest is easy as pie! (Actually, it's much easier than making a pie!) Did you ever think that you could easily make your own pancetta? Making pancetta at home is easy with this recipe! This homemade pancetta-unsmoked bacon (pork belly)-is cured with salt, sugar, pepper, juniper berries, bay leaves, nutmeg, and thyme.

To begin with this recipe, we must prepare a few components. You can have home made pancetta using 8 ingredients and 10 steps. Here is how you can achieve it.

The ingredients needed to make Home Made Pancetta:

1. Get 5 salt
2. Get black pepper
3. Take 1 juniper berries
4. Prepare 1 fresh thyme
5. Prepare ground nutmeg
6. Prepare 5 bay leaf
7. Get 1 brown sugar
8. Get 1 pork belly

Pancetta is made from pork belly. Any rib bones must be removed and the skin left on. To make great tasting pancetta, you need to start with the freshest meat you can find. Not long ago, I bought a pound of pork belly and got to thinking about making my own pancetta.

Steps to make Home Made Pancetta:

1. Take the pork belly and cut the skin off if it is still on
2. Salt is important in this cured meat. You need 5% salt to weight ratio. Weigh your meat and calculate how much salt you will need for that weight.
3. Lightly bruise the juniper berries in a mortar and pestle with the black pepper and thyme. Add all dry ingredients to create a dry rub.
4. Use a plastic bag or tupperware to cure this meat in the dry rub. Add equal parts of rub on both sides. Do not use a metal container as it does have acidic properties when reacting to meat.
5. Let this mixture cure over time. For every 500 grams of meat you will let it cure for 3 days. If your meat is 2687 grams you will be waiting quite a while.
6. After it has cured, you will need to wash the excess spices it cured in off. At this point you may reseason with the same spice mixture.
7. Dry off the meat. You will now take your meat and roll it tight and secure it in butcher's twine. Tie it as tight possible so it maintains the rolled shape. You can wrap this in cheese cloth to ensure it has a protective barrier but I don't do this.
8. This meat will hang in your refrigerator for three weeks to allow the enzymes to metabolize. Make sure to hang it length wise and not side ways. Temperature should not be 60 degrees to 71 degrees Fahrenheit if you decide to hang it in your basement in the winter.
9. After three weeks you can now eat this. If you did it right you will see white mold on the outside area. This mold is good and has protected your meat. If you have black or green mold that is dripping liquid you have contaminated your meat by not letting it sit in the right temperature.
10. Slice it thin and serve or use it as bacon to add to pastas and several other dishes.

To make great tasting pancetta, you need to start with the freshest meat you can find. Not long ago, I bought a pound of pork belly and got to thinking about making my own pancetta. Pancetta is the Italian cousin of bacon, made by curing pork belly with salt and aromatics, but not smoked. I considered the traditional dry cure route (Michael Ruhlman's cookbook is a wealth of information on making cured meats). But it's something I haven't dabbled in before.

So that is going to wrap it up for this exceptional food home made pancetta recipe. Thank you very much for your time. I am sure you can make this at home. There is gonna be interesting food at home recipes coming up. Remember to save this page on your browser, and share it to your loved ones, friends and colleague. Thanks again for reading. Go on get cooking!