I bought a pork belly today (about 10 lbs) and am planning to make half of it into maple cured bacon and the other half into Pancetta.

Ruhlman's (and that other guy's) book calls for juniper berries in the pancetta cure and I haven't found any in my usual haunts today. Should I wait and order some online, omit 'em, substitute with something else, or use your recipe.

Thanks.

Ron

I've made panchette with and without juniper berries. Did not taste much difference. I think you can safely make panchetta without them. In Italy there are countless different variations, there is no "official" recipe.

I do love juniper, but...

I figured since I'm first starting out, I should work on getting the basic cure right before I go playing with other ingredients. The link below is for some pancetta that I tried to keep simple and does not have juniper in it.

my last attempt

Ron,

You can purchase juniper berries at Penzey's Spices. They have a store in Falls Church.

Jim

Thanks all.

My lovely bride got tired of my whining and found juniper berries at Wegmans (a grocery store).

Being new to all this, I like to try and follow the recipes (at least the first time through) and the smell of the rub from the book with the juniper berries was really good. I'm anxious to see how this turns out. Will let you know in 3 weeks.

Thanks again for chiming in.

Ron

Here are some pix of the pancetta and bacon...





Pancetta when first rolled....


In the wine chiller for two weeks....


Ready to be sliced...









This was a fun and easy project and OH-SO-TASTY.

Highly recommended.

Ron

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Ron... L.,

That Pancetta looks really good sliced.

Aggre with John!

That looks awesome!

Is your wine cooler set up specifically for meat curing? Is pancetta like bacon where the humidity control isn't so important?

I'd like to get a wine cooler going with a few tweaks and some weird meat in it!

The only modification I made to the wine cooler was to flip the rack over because it is high in the middle to store two bottles of wine side-by-side and I wanted the pancetta in the middle. I also bridged the large gap between the rack wires with a cocktail stirrer to keep it more-or-less level. Very high tech!

I used the chiller to be able to control the temperature (63 deg) because my basement was likely too warm.

I blew off the humidity. I've read most of the 90-some page thread on charcuterie that someone else mentioned on this site and the folks there suggested just keeping an eye on your meat in low humidity and not letting it dry out. That thread is longer than the book! Someone suggested giving it a coat of EVOO if it got too dry... but I didn't have to do that. Another suggestion they made for people using refrigerators for curing was to put a pan of salt water in the bottom. No experience with that, either.

However, as reported by j biesinger elsewhere, the end pieces were very scab-like and were discarded.

Ron