Makin’ Bacon: Round 4
OK this is the one. THIS IS THE ONE. I psyched myself up. I’m going to make Maple Bacon. Turns out, I made Treacle Bacon. What? I’ll explain…
So, I thought I’d do streaky bacon, for two reasons. One, I love streaky bacon. Two, it was something different to what I’d been eating for weeks. I didn’t even think about deboning the belly myself, I asked Mr Butcher to do it, and debone it he did.
So I was all ready to put the maple in with the curing salts, but fortunately Mr Butcher saved me again. “Do it at the end.” – I’m paraphrasing I can’t remember what he said but that’s basically the gist of it. So, into a bag it went…
Turning it every day for 5 days, at the end, I rinsed it off thoroughly, and prepared to give it another 24 hours with the maple…
Lookin’ good.
I went to add the maple and here’s where it went wrong.
I forgot to get Maple Syrup in.
Twonk.
I happened to have some treacle left over from another recipe (the Mother Sauce) so I got big spoonfuls of it and put it on top. Then I thought I’d use my hands to rub it in.
Oh. My. God. What a mistake. Do not do this. 0/10. Do not recommend.
After getting in a hell of a mess, and the treacle doing nothing but basically sliding around the top of the bacon, I changed tactics. I cleaned everything up, and then drizzled it over using a spoon, slowly, until I’d covered most of it. Then I added some brown sugar, and possibly a pinch of something else.
I know. It doesn’t look very nice at the point… but after 24 hours, it looked at first, even worse. I’d not put it in a deep enough dish, and it had got quite liquidy and had gone all over the fridge. Fortunately this fridge was empty other than this – so it wasn’t a disaster, but lesson learnt.
After I’d washed it all off, and dried it down, it looked really, really good.
I have to admit I was a bit excited at this point. I was desperate to try some. I sliced off a test slice and cooked it – it was awesome (I forgot to take a pic, sorry).
So then it was on to the slicing!
The one thing I’d say is I don’t think the maple flavour was hugely strong. It was there, but subtle. I’ll be looking into how to improve that over the coming weeks, but for now, I’ve got a freezer full of bacon!!
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