Pork side = Pork belly?


 
K

KirkJ

TVWBB Member
Trying my first run at bacon. Went to the local Publix and asked for pork belly, butcher came out with what was labeled as a whole pork side. Looks like a pork belly to me skin on and the whole thing is just shy of 11lbs. (Plan to make half into bacon and half into a porchetta) Is this the right cut just under a different name? I'll post a picture later if needed.
 
Looks like pork belly to me... But I'm no expert. Hopefully other members can confirm what you got.
 
Pork side, pork belly, same thing Kirk.

Some use the term 'side pork' for what might be cured belly, so make sure this is uncured.
 
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Thanks for the input and confirming that it was what I hoped it was, yup completely uncured for the time being.
 
Good luck. Looking forward to watching how this turns out. Keep up posted along the way with pics.
 
Ok so cut the pork side in half, used half for a porchetta, delicious but not something I could eat regularly, and the wife bought the most recent Food Network magazine, it is their bacon issue. There is a recipie from Michael Simon in there on a cure he uses for his bacon, and since his restaurants are buger and beer based restaurants I figured a good place to start as it calls for pink salt which I have on hand from my yearly corned beef. It also calls for kosher salt, brown sugar, honey, red pepper flakes, paprika and cumin seeds.



The final cut:



And ready for it's two week cure:

 
KirkJ, did you find that the spice rub with the honey added turned to one big lump of goop? I tried that recipe last nite and needed to thin it out quite a bit before being able to apply it to the pork belly. Something seemed not quite right with the recipe that was in the magazine.
 
that looks a heck of a lot nicer than what I got several months ago. I'd love to find a slab of that.
 
You guys and the bacon. I swear this is going to be one of the very next things up on my list.

Looks good what ya got so far.
 
Just a hint. I find that rubbing the dry ingredients on the belly first, putting the belly into the bag, and THEN adding any liquids seems to work really well. I've found that you really don't need to work hard to evenly distibute the wet ingredients very much as they will get all mixed in when you do the daily (or every other day) flipping thing. The liquid that comes out of the pork will thin the wet ingredients to the point where they easily distribute.

Just something I found.

Russ
 
KirkJ said:
Trying my first run at bacon. Went to the local Publix and asked for pork belly, butcher came out with what was labeled as a whole pork side. Looks like a pork belly to me skin on and the whole thing is just shy of 11lbs. (Plan to make half into bacon and half into a porchetta) Is this the right cut just under a different name? I'll post a picture later if needed.
Click to expand...

Same thing. To aid in penetration of cure, just score the skin along the long side. Then rub the cure into both sides equally and you'll end up with a good product. I live in South Georgia where we run dawgs and hawgs and I know that some here might be tired of hearing it but i love passing along information to help others make a fine product.
 
Yes the honey made it a lump that was hard to rub did the best that I could and figured 10 days of flipping would get the cure throughout. Ended up with a lot of liquid, about a cups worth, but it turned out great. I'll be posting pics later today. Definitely will be making bacon on a regular basis.
 
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