Until this year I don’t believe that I have had a honeycrisp apple. They come from heaven Washington State according to the little sticker that came on my organic apple (apparently sticker clue doesn’t count as a contaminate). They’re sweet, they’ve got a mild floral component, and they’re usually crunchy (thus the crisp in the [...]
After smoking the bacon for around three and a half hours on my smoker and then moving them to the oven to finish them off to an internal temperature of 150 degrees I have finally concluded that out of this batch: maple is the winner. I ended up having to move to the oven after [...]
I have flipped over the bacon bags and the container that they’re in has Maple Bacon brine juice in it. The bag seems to have formed some sort of leak and I can’t find it. It may make for milder bacon, but I’m not going to start over, I’ll just discover where I’m at and [...]
Today the bacon has firmed up a tiny bit, the brine is starting to collect even more, I would say maybe two tablespoons now in each bag. I have decided to smoke the bacon with pecan, its my favorite flavor with pork, and I can’t feel good about going with a more generic wood. It [...]
This morning I checked in my fridge and it appears that the rub I put on the pork belly has been doing its job and the salt has drawn out some water from the pork cells and that water is mixing with the sugar (and other spices and flavorings) and its turning into a brine. [...]
We’re preparing for our 2009 garden. 2008′s was a stinker, so we’re looking at making 2009 rock. To do so we’re going to be doing something we’ve never done before and attempt square foot gardening. We had read about it before, but this year we picked up Mel Bartholomew’s book All New Square Foot Gardening, [...]
I have ordered some pork belly to cure and smoke myself. I am going to cure & smoke the bacon at home without nitrites. This is a slightly risky situation because of the chance of botulism, but I’m going to continue to do my homework so as to avoid any serious risk. There are a [...]