Pancetta Tesa

[mr_whipple]

Decide to try this instead of guanciale as I had a few pieces of a belly left from a previous project. I came across a million different takes on the spices involved, so I picked two that seemed good to me and did these two pieces up. These went in the cure 14 days ago today.

I rinsed off the spices, poked a hole thru them with a double loop of kitchen twine, gave them a nice grind all over of my favorite peppercorn mixture, weighed and ready to go.

Here's another shot just because.

And into the drying chamber. I'm going to try the drying schedule for the guanciale recipe over at taste of artisan. It goes like this:

Stage	Duration	Temp	RH
Warming	6 hours	77F (25C)	< 99 %
Drying	18 hours	73F (23C)	75-80 %
Drying	24 hours	71F (22C)	72-76 %
Drying	24 hours	68F (20C)	68-72 %
Drying	24 hours	64F (18C)	65-75 %
Drying	24 hours	61F (16C)	72-76 %
Drying	24 hours	59F (15C)	75-80 %

I put this wine fridge together just for this. This is going to be an experiment and if it works put I'm going to turn my bigger wine fridge into the drying / fermenting chamber when I get a bigger fridge / freezer to make a more better sized maturing chamber.

I moved the piece on the left after taking that pic as I didn't want it that close to the heated mat. I'll weigh them at the end of the 7 day cycle and record that for tracking the weight loss over the next few months in the maturing chamber.

Thanks for looking!

 

[indaswamp]

Looking good. In for the finish.

One thing I notice is how close the pancetta on the right is to the RH% sensor. Or is the depth perception off in the pic.? Just make sure the RH sensor is 4-5" away from the meat or it will give you false high RH%.....

 

[mr_whipple]

No.. you were right. I moved the govee and the inkbird sensors toward the front of the fridge a bit to get away from the meat when I moved the piece on the left. My initial placement wasn't very well thought out.

 

[mr_whipple]

We have failure After the initial warming period of 6 hours.. which ran about 45 minutes longer, I went to dial the temp down and monitor the progress. Well in short, the fridge died... as in no cooling. So I swore a lot and went straight to swearing some more. When it was readily apparent this was not happening I came to my senses and moved the two pieces into the big wine fridge. I tested it it throughout the week before hanging the meat with zero problems so I'm a bit miffed to say the least. I'll see if I can fix it, there's just not much to one of these so whatever the problem is should be easy enough to find. There is a temp adjust / on off knob that is a little suspect, and maybe the temp sensor. I may try to just wire it up like my MES and leave the control to the inkbird in its entirety. If it can't be fixed oh well. I'll just have to accelerate my search for a full size fridge.

 

[indaswamp]

We have failure After the initial warming period of 6 hours.. which ran about 45 minutes longer, I went to dial the temp down and monitor the progress. Well in short, the fridge died... as in no cooling. So I swore a lot and went straight to swearing some more. When it was readily apparent this was not happening I came to my senses and moved the two pieces into the big wine fridge. I tested it it throughout the week before hanging the meat with zero problems so I'm a bit miffed to say the least. I'll see if I can fix it, there's just not much to one of these so whatever the problem is should be easy enough to find. There is a temp adjust / on off knob that is a little suspect, and maybe the temp sensor. I may try to just wire it up like my MES and leave the control to the inkbird in its entirety. If it can't be fixed oh well. I'll just have to accelerate my search for a full size fridge.

Does this fridge have a compressor? Some wine fridges use peltier technology instead of a compressor. They do not cool well for use as a drying chamber....

 

[mr_whipple]

It has a small compressor and a vertical chiller plate on the rear wall. I'm not going to mess with it today. I might take it to work and work on it there under the guise of bringing a new fridge for drinks and such...or just start tomorrow afternoon.

 

[mr_whipple]

So.. I found my problem, and it's me. I took the fridge out to the garage work bench and plugged it in. I instantly heard a quick wooshing sound coming out of the hole I drilled in the side. Apparently there was a refrigerant line there when I drilled that hole and I didn't notice it. I had run the fridge mocked up with all the power cords shut in the door gasket, but not after drilling. I only tested out the heating and humidity control and all went well until trying to cool and obviously by then it was too late. So my big concern was that the refrigerant and associated oil from the compressor had leaked into the chamber with the meat as I only sealed it up from the outside on a temporary basis. Erring on the side of safety I took those two pieces and tossed them in the freezer til trash day. I drilled that hole almost next to the hinge for the door and between two of the shelving slots.... not in a million years would I believe there was a line there. It wasn't from the chiller plate, so not sure of it's function. Regardless I'm very mad at myself for self induced failure. Oh well, back to the drawing board.

 

[indaswamp]

Yeah....gotta be very careful when drilling into the walls of a frost free fridge. They put the condenser lines in the wall now, not along the back like the old ones. You can mix up a solution of corn starch and vodka...make it thick like a paste, and smear that thinly over the wall where you want to drill. Plug the unit in and let it start cooling. It will get warm where the coils are in the wall and will evaporate the alcohol in the paste....you will see ghost lines where it is dry. Have a sharpie pen handy and trace the ghost line. now you know where the cooling line are in the wall.

 

[mr_whipple]

I'll be doing that if I go down the mini fridge route again and I might just be... my friend wants a new one for his garage so he said I could have it. I had read that trick somewhere here but was overconfident and screwed it away.