This is an interesting cure that makes perfect breakfast bacon. I like this as back bacon as it makes brilliant bacon butties. The coffee flavour is subtle, but definitely there in the final product.
Any way you eat it, remember to cook it gently. Blasting it in a pan at high heat will burn it double quick due to the sweet syrupy outer.
Maple Espresso Bacon
I don't find this bacon really needs to cold smoke when ready, but a few hours wont hurt it if, like Mrs Frank, you don't see the point of unsmoked bacon!
Equipment
- 1 Ziplock bag or more as required
Ingredients
- 1 lump Meaty pork belly or loin for back bacon
- 2.75 % Salt
- 0.25 % Cure #1
- 0.25 % Ground pepper
- 0.2 % Ground cinnamon
- 0.2 % Ground coriander
- 0.2 % Ground ginger
- 0.2 % Ground nutmeg
- 2 % Strong ground coffee
- 1 drizzle Maple flavoured syrup
Instructions
- Before you begin, skin and bone the meat as necessary, then consider cutting the pork up into manageable pieces. I prefer to do lumps that fit into a gallon sizes ziplock bag – usually 2 x 1.5kg bits from a 3kg lump
- Mix all the dry ingredients together to make the cure and coat the meat.
- Carefully drop the meat into a bag and drizzle a generous amount of maple syrup over it and carefully massage the syrup to coat.
- After a day or so the cure will go wet and slushy, this will start to brew the coffee!
- Turn every day for a fortnight – congrats, your pork is now bacon!
- Wash off the cure under a cold tap – or if you prefer a big jug of cold coffee – and pat dry. The idea is to gently rinse off the cure sludge rather than scrub the meat clean!
- Keep it on a cake rack in the fridge for a couple of days to dry out a bit, put the rack over a a tray or plate with some salty water and keep the fat side up, and ideally loosely cover with a bit of baking paper or peach paper – this creates a microclimate that should help avoid it developing a hard outer that can be a problem in modern frost free fridges.
- Wrap in peach paper (like a non-waxy butchers paper) and leave to mature in the fridge for at least another week. We want the bacon to lose a bit of moisture and for the flavour to develop.