Here ya go Bear. You were warned to be on the lookout for this. It's is all about carrying on your legacy sir, if in a totally different direction. I've never been accused of staying on the beaten path for very long though :-)
A couple months ago I did my first batch of Bear's Buckboard Bacon and it's almost to the point of being an obsession
I absolutely love the stuff. Decided to give something different a try just to see what would happen and it turned out quite successfully. I thought it may be fun to try curing it then dry aging it in UMAi bags. I followed his tutorial exactly except for using Cure #2 instead of TQ for the cure. Seasonings were exactly the same. I used pork butt and let it cure for a week and a half, rinsed, soaked, applied the final coat of seasonings, then into the UMAi bags. It took about a month and a half to attain a 35% weight loss. Since both pieces of meat were very close to the same weight in the beginning, they hit the target weight within a day or two of each other. Here's what I wound up with:
Done aging and still in the UMAi bags
Out of the UMAi bags and cut in half. Lordy lordy,look at that coloring!! (4 pics)
All sliced up and the left-overs on a plate to chop into crumbles
Close up of the final slicing
It came out really, really well. The meat has a texture that's somewhat a combination of silk and cotton candy.....very smooth, somewhat delicate, and pretty much melts in your mouth just like artisan Italian cured meats. The flavor was just a tiny bit spicy from the pepper but subdued and pleasant. I'll make a couple of changes next time. First one is that I'll cold smoke it for 3 or 4 hours after it's cured and before going into the UMAi bags. The BBBB is smoked and mine is missing that element. The other thing I'll do is add some salt to the final application of spices. The BBBB is cured with TQ, which has a salty element but there's no salt in mine at all. Not a travesty by any means, just an observation to create a deeper and richer flavor for the next batch
Off the deep end in Lago,
Robert
A couple months ago I did my first batch of Bear's Buckboard Bacon and it's almost to the point of being an obsession
I absolutely love the stuff. Decided to give something different a try just to see what would happen and it turned out quite successfully. I thought it may be fun to try curing it then dry aging it in UMAi bags. I followed his tutorial exactly except for using Cure #2 instead of TQ for the cure. Seasonings were exactly the same. I used pork butt and let it cure for a week and a half, rinsed, soaked, applied the final coat of seasonings, then into the UMAi bags. It took about a month and a half to attain a 35% weight loss. Since both pieces of meat were very close to the same weight in the beginning, they hit the target weight within a day or two of each other. Here's what I wound up with:Done aging and still in the UMAi bags
Out of the UMAi bags and cut in half. Lordy lordy,look at that coloring!! (4 pics)
All sliced up and the left-overs on a plate to chop into crumbles
Close up of the final slicing
It came out really, really well. The meat has a texture that's somewhat a combination of silk and cotton candy.....very smooth, somewhat delicate, and pretty much melts in your mouth just like artisan Italian cured meats. The flavor was just a tiny bit spicy from the pepper but subdued and pleasant. I'll make a couple of changes next time. First one is that I'll cold smoke it for 3 or 4 hours after it's cured and before going into the UMAi bags. The BBBB is smoked and mine is missing that element. The other thing I'll do is add some salt to the final application of spices. The BBBB is cured with TQ, which has a salty element but there's no salt in mine at all. Not a travesty by any means, just an observation to create a deeper and richer flavor for the next batch
Off the deep end in Lago,
Robert
