This Sustainable House

Archive for the ‘Kitchen Garden’ Category

The last attempt to make bacon turned out to be a touch salty, though it will be great for cooking. A little research suggests that dry curing may be a part of the problem (as well as curing for too long). So I have decided to try wet curing or brining.

The brine mix that I made up was 12L of water, 1.2kg salt, 800g dark brown sugar, 2 tablespoons black peppercorns, 1 tablespoon piri piri and 1 tablespoon of whole cloves. The whole lot was brought to the boil, and held there for about 10mins, skimming the foam off the top. It is then left to cool, and then placed into the fridge to get it down to 4 degrees celcius.

A pork belly was then submerged into the mix (holding it in a non-reactive container) for 5 days. Frozen slightly, and then sliced. This is what is referred to as ‘Green Bacon’, not to be confused with Green Eggs and Ham, as it hasn’t been smoked. If you wanted to smoke you could certainly do it prior to slicing.

The net result of this process was some REALLY good bacon. It’s not salty to the taste but the subtle aroma of honey and spices permeates the meat beautifully.

One of the activities that I throughly enjoy is preserving. Be that storing peaches in light syrup, making an apricot jam (fantastic with a few vanilla beans) or brewing up a stunning batch of chutney. Preserving is a great way to store away the seasons excesses, and to impress visitors with their “take home” packs.

However there is a whole branch of preserving that I haven’t really ventured into, that of charcuterie or preserving of meats. Charcuterie originally referred to the production of pork products such as sausages, bacon & ham. However a more modern meaning is the production of meat products from any sort of animal.

Of course charcuterie isn’t just preserving, after all fresh pork sausages certainly qualify, however many of the products that are produced do in fact have a preserving effect… think hung salamis or legs of ham.

I decided to dip my toes into the water, so to speak, with producing my own bacon. Bacon was chosen as a starting point as it is one of those iconic meats imbued with so much flavor and memory. In fact, when I was a vegetarian (many moons ago) it was bacon that I truly missed not fillet steak. Also, bacon is a fairly easy meat to prepare requiring little specialized equipment or ingredients.

To make bacon all you need to do is coat pork (traditionally belly or loin) in a curing mixture allowing this mixture to draw out the excess moisture which could cause the meat to rot. This can then be sliced as it is, it’s called green bacon at this stage (Dr Seuss would be proud), or you can smoke it to add additional flavor.

The curing mix that I am using as 2kg pickling salt (don’t use table salt which has iodine added), 200g dark brown sugar, and ~1 tablespoon freshly cracked pepper. These are throughly mixed together and then handfuls are rubbed over the meat paying particular attention to cover the whole surface, including all the nooks and crannies. You can add saltpeter (Sodium Nitrate) into your curing mix, though I have chosen not to add this ingredient due to the link between heated nitrates, nitrosamines and cancer.

Once this is done, place the pork in a non-reactive container in a cool place. In 24hrs pour off any accumulated liquid, re-salt, and the replace. Basically you do this each day for between 5-14 days, depending on how salty you like your bacon.

Once the curing process is completed, then soak the pork in clean water for two hours. Discard the water and soak again for another hour in fresh water. Finally, hang the side somewhere cool for 1-2 days so that a pellicle can form. The pellicle is like a skin that’ll help preserve the meat for longer and allow an “attachment” point for smoke molecules, if you go down that path.

At this stage your bacon is good to eat as green bacon. Slice it, and enjoy!!!

Update: The very first streaky bacon side (made from pork belly) was tasted today. It has a very different taste to shop bought bacon and is quite salty. This isn’t terribly surpirsing as I salted it for 8 days, so the next belly will be done for 5-6 which should lessen the salt content. The one thing that you will notice with your home made bacon though is that it doesn’t shrivel away to nothing in the pan. Apparently this has to do with the copious quantities of water that is pumped into commercially produced bacon which is then released during cooking. In this case there isn’t any water to lose so it stays about the same size as the

One of the most important permacultural principles is that every important purpose should be served by multiple elements, and each element should serve multiple purposes. By following this principle we build resilience and efficiency into our systems.

As you know, I recently brought online a new element at TSH… the incubator! One of the reasons that the incubator was built the way it was is that the size allows for multiple uses. For example, whilst the device is running to incubate the chicken eggs, at a ‘cool’ 37.5 degrees celsius, there is also room for a few other items. Over the past week the incubator has produced several kilograms of natural yoghurt, and a couple of loaves of sourdough. Wonderful!!

It would appear that the temperature is just perfect to get all those lovely little micro-organisms pumping…

A little later, when it’s not in use as an incubator, it will also produce some lovely ales… keeping that temperature just right for the yeasts.

Can you guess what my second favourite sin is?

For those of you who keep up with the TSH website, which isn’t hard given the small number of posts I put up each month, you will recall that about 3 weeks ago I decided to bring to life a sourdough starter… The Mulloonian! The starter took about a week to get going, and over the past few weeks the community has started to develop and settle in. Who needs SIMS when one has a sourdough. In fact, the Mulloonian was going so well that I encouraged it produce a ‘sprog’ so there is currently two colonies in the fridge, excluding last weeks curry, one on organic wheat flour and the other on organic spelt flour.

However the one thing I haven’t yet been able to master is turning either Mulloonian into a nice loaf of bread. Each time I have tried, and admitadley I was trying with the bread machine, it produced an edible loaf with an excellent taste, but a very heavy texture. It could be that the Mulloonian still isn’t quite ‘ripe’ but more likely is the fact that I’m not quite used to it yet.

So this weekend the goal is to practice making sourdough. I have started with a semi-leavened light wholemeal loaf (pictured below) so as to start the weekend with a win. A semi-leavened bread is a bread in which you use both your sourdough culture AND commercial high yield yeast. The advantage is that the commercial yeast gives the dough a really big boost whilst the sourdough culture still imparts a wonderfully subtle taste. It’s the ideal bread for someone who isn’t all that keen on the strong sourdoughs. The recipe that I have used was loosely based on “The Sourdough Bakers” Light Wholemeal Bread. This is a very good site, and well worth a look if you are into sourdoughs.

The next step will be to get a full sourdough bread going in which commercial yeast doesn’t add that boost. This is a little trickier, and will take longer, as there is no certainty around how the culture will behave. Think of the difference between the Mulloonian and commercial yeast as the difference between a flower pollinated in the field by the wind, and one pollinated in isolation by a scientist in rubber gloves. The latter will behave fairly predictably but goodness knows what you’ll get with the former! And that’s the key point… I need to bake with the Mulloonian so as to get to know the community, understand it, and learn how to coax it to work for me. It’s about me understanding it’s needs and treating it accordingly, rather than just applying a mindless tool to the dough.

I’ll pop up some pictures of the resulting sourdoughs… assuming that they are worth photographing!

Semi-Leaven Bread

Like a lot of people, I love sourdough bread. The complex flavours, the aromas, it’s enough to get the mouth watering just by thinking about it. Wonderful!!

However the key to a good sourdough is the starter… a colony of living breathing organisms (fungi and bacteria).There are a number of ways to create a starter such as seeding it with a commercial/existing starter, using commercial yeast to kick it off, or relying on natural yeasts/bacteria in your local environment. It is this latter approach that I have taken to create… “The Mulloonian!”

The starter is being created by mixing equal quantities of water and flour together, and then leaving the mix to ‘collect’ some local yeasts & bacteria. The mix will then need to be ‘fed’ every day for about a week. Feeding is pretty simple, basically we dump half the current mix and replace it with fresh water/flour mix.

After about a week, give or take, the mix should be good and bubbly, with a pleasant slightly sour smell. Bingo! We have starter…

Keep your starter in the fridge and feed it once a week or so. It’s pretty hard to ‘kill’ a starter unless you let it get too hot. Even starving it to death is difficult! If oc

casionally fed, then a starter can live for centuries… think of it as a family heirloom.

The TSH “Mulloonian” was kicked off earlier this evening and I’ll keep you posted on it’s developments… I feel like a father.

1/2/11 – Update – The Mulloonian burst into life this morning with some lovely bubbles appearing throughout the mix. It is also begginning to develop a little hooch, and a distinctly sour aroma… Live, Damn You! Live!!!!

7/2/11 – Update – The Mulloonian is definitely alive and breathing. It took about a week for the cultures to really get going, and now they are bubbling and boiling with that gorgeous distinctly sour smell. In addition, if you take a little taste it is so sour it’ll make your face screw up! Next step is to try our mix to make some bread…

The Mulloonian - Day 1

The Mulloonian - Day 7

As some of you are aware, my last incubation attempt was a total failure! Unfortunately my incubator’s thermostat, a still-air foam model (which will remain brand-less), failed causing an unacceptable temperature spike. This spike killed the majority of the developing embryos resulting in a hatch of only 6 chicks (from 28 fertile eggs). This is an appalling hatch rate.

So I have decided to build my own cabinet style incubator, complete with digital thermostat. This ‘model’ will be capable of setting up to 132 eggs at a time (in the auto-turners) or 44 eggs at weekly intervals. It will also have a dedicated hatching tray, to facilitate cleaning, and the ability to use it during winter to whip up the odd brew…

I’m achieving all of this by using an old fridge, no longer in working order, as my cabinet. This has the benefit of being incredibly well insulated and easy to clean.

I’m adding to this a fan, a heat source, and my egg turners.

At this stage the prototype is undergoing initial trials with different heat sources and this clearly demonstrates the potential efficiency of the unit. Below is a picture of the measurement apparatus. You can see that the temperature inside the unit is a cosy 35.7 degrees celcius and is exceedingly even (hatching tray is located on the bottom of the unit, egg trays half way up). Of course, the current temperature isn’t quite high enough to incubate eggs but that temperature has been reached with only 48 watts of power (considering both the fan AND the heat). I’m guessing that a total of 60 watts of power will be necessary to run the unit, equating to a cost of ~$0.36 per day to run… Not bad when you consider it could have 132 eggs in it at the time.

Anyhow, this is just an initial post and I’ll return to this project in a week or two when it is fully operational to show you the ‘finished’ product.

How often have you thought about where your ‘meat’ comes from?

Have you ever considered the suffering modern ‘farming’ production involves?

I have. At TSH we pride ourselves on providing an environment in which we can balance the competing pressures of animal production vs animal welfare. From my experience the two concepts are rarely found together, as animal production is all about producing as many animals as possible whereas welfare is about providing the opportunity for animals to behave naturally and be, well animals.

Unfortunately much of the meat we purchase in Western society has been produced under the former concept. This is why we have 14 ‘free-range’ chickens to the square metre in commercial sheds, why we have pigs raised in crates unable to turn around or escape the smell, and why cattle on feedlots need to be kept pumped full of antibiotics just to say alive. The abuses of the system are many, and there are more than enough websites on the internet dealing with these already. However for a ‘fun’ primer check out The Meatrix.

However at TSH, rather than just bleat about the problem, so to speak, we thought we’d do something about it. Enter the TSH “CSA Meat” scheme. Read the rest of this entry »