Short-Rib Maple Bacon Bomb

 

That's right another bacon post but this time I am using Short-Rib instead of the Brisket. This is a simple post so if you are looking for more details look HERE.

BEEF SHORT-RIB FROM COSTCO.

Combined salt and Cure#1 and applied to every nook and cranny. I then combined the rest of ingredients and Vacuumed sealed and will flip every day for about 2-3 weeks. 

As you can see from the list to the right these are very simple ingredients and they are easy to find.

NOTES ON CURING








Cold smoked using my trusty A-MAZE-N cold smoker. I used apple wood and smoked the short rib for 12 hours.  After the twelve hours I refrigerated the bacon then sliced it up. It was delicious. 

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Yin Yang Bacon

One night while eating Chinese food I started to reflect on all these fabulous ingredients and it hit me...."I must create something!!!!" That's how most of my recipes come to me while eating food or watching TV. So I pondered away and I let my creative inclinations kick in. I have been eating Asian food all my life so this can't be that difficult. What ever I was going to make it had to be original.

Than it hit me like a ton of bricks. I wonder how Bacon would taste with Asian ingredients? I love Bacon and Asian food and I cook it and eat it often so why not. If you ask me it's a match made in heaven. I offer my version of Asian Bacon here so enjoy. 

So why the name Yin-Yang? For that

you have to click on the link to first find out what Yin-Yang means but I will give you an abridged definition. Simple Chinese philosophy describes Yin-Yang as opposite or contrary forces that appears contradictory but actually gives rise to each other as they interrelate to to each other. The ingredients in this recipe definitely are a Yin-Yang. 

Easy recipe to follow. Click on the link to the left to get dry cure instructions

First thing I did was measure exactly what I needed. Here is a cool pic of some of my ingredients. 

Pictures are worth a thousand words.

Using a Mortar and Pestle was really cool.  I could have used a food processor to accomplish the same thing but this was so much better. Feeling the ingredients getting pulverized through the pestle was awesome.  I felt connected with the ingredients. Yes I know that sounds weird.   

 

Well by now you all know I don't eat Pork so this is of course Boneless Short-Ribs I purchased at Costco. Short-Ribs are an excellent choice for Bacon because of the fat content. For those of you unfamiliar with my other numerous Bacon projects you can click HERE!!

 I place whole spices in a dry skillet and heat them through to release their essential oils than used a spice grinder to pulverize them. 

I combined the salt and Cure#1 and coated the meat thoroughly getting it into every nook and cranny. I than combined all the spices, herbs and dextrose and coated the meat exactly as stated above. After meat was nicely coated I added the ingredients from the mortar and pestle and lathered the meat up. 

The Shaoxing wine, Sesame seed oil and the Fish sauce was mixed together and placed in Vacuum sealed bag where it will sit for 21 days (until May 9, 2014) being flipped everyday. Afterwards I will cold smoke Bacon in Apple wood.  

So after careful consideration I felt that the very thick short-ribs had been cured after 18 days. As you can see from the picture I rinsed off all of the cure. Now on to the cold smoker. 

I cold smoked that Short-Ribs for 6 hours using Applet pellets. I used a product called A-MAZE-N-PELLET-SMOKER to cold smoke.  So easy to use and it really does not generate much heat at all. 

Bacon all sliced up!! Here are my thoughts on this Asian Bacon experiment. The Bacon came out OK, just OK mind you nothing incredible or over the top. I need to rework the recipe so the Asian Flavors come out. I am also going to reduce the salt % especially since I used fish sauce which has a lot of salt. The Bacon could have been a little sweeter too. Back to the drawing board I go!!!

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Rumified Bacon Bomb

Rumified Bacon Bomb!!!!!!!

I was thinking the other day about Rum and all the great recipes that are made with it and I thought to my self why not bacon. If you can make Rum Balls with it why not bacon!!! Think about it for a moment Spice Rum and meat sounds like a match made in Heaven. Rum is great in anything. If it's good enough to drink it will be undeniably great in food. Anyhow that is my hope anyway. 

I decided to use boneless short ribs for this bacon because it contains lots of fat and is readily available. 

So what goes well with a Spiced Rum? After tasting the rum I came up with some ideas that I think will work. Spiced Rum reminded me of cookies. Hmm, that sparked an idea!! So I Googled spiced cookies and found recipes for Pumpkin, Ginger, Molasses and Spiced cookies. All these recipes were similar with just some minor ratio differences in their ingredients. So what is going to go in my bacon? I decided to use those same ingredients in my bacon. 

Note 1: The weight of meat plus fat is 100%. All ingredients to be added are expressed as a percentage of the weight of meat plus fat. Percentages can be used to standardize recipes regardless of batch size.  All weights are metric. 

Note 2: No weights are given because the weights of meats vary. Everything is a percentage of the meats weight after trimming. Example- Meat weight 2393 grams and we want to find out the amount of salt we need in grams- 2393 X 3.5%=83.755 or 2392/100 X 3.5 =83.755 grams. 

What makes my Rumified Bacon Bomb so unique is the ingredients. I used Muscovado Sugar  which is way better than brown sugar I think. It is used to make Rum which is why I chose it for this recipe   I also used Cassia Cinnamon Bark too. Ahh, and my secret weapon was the Spiced Rum of course.   

So what did I do?  I combined the Salt, Cure #1, and dextrose and rubbed it deep into the meat. 

I used a spice grinder and ground up the Cinnamon Bark, Whole cloves and Whole Allspice which is shown in the picture to the left. I combined the Dark Muscovado sugar and the now ground up Cinnamon, Cloves and Allspice and rubbed it into the meat. 



Meat Vacuumed sealed and will cure for 21 days. I will than cold smoke meat for 6 hours using Apple. 

All done curing and rinsed off. They are drying off to develop a Pellicle. Developing a good pellicle is important because it helps the smoke adhere to the meat during the smoking process. 

Getting ready to smoke the bacon with Apple on my Weber smokey mountain. 

Just started the Apple Smoke. I am cold smoking the Bacon with Applet pellets. The ambient temperature outside was about 55 degrees. I am using the A-MAZE-N cold smoker. 

The bacon smoked for 6 1/2 hours. Notice the difference in colors. Contrast the meat from where it started until now. 

Final thoughts. If you like spiced Rum you will love this Bacon. I will make it again!!!!!

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