Often referred to as Italian bacon, pancetta is salty, fatty and damn delicious.
But you don’t need to visit a restaurant to get it in your mouth. Here’s Loka owner and chef Dave Mottershall, who takes a whole animal approach to cooking, on how to transform pork belly into gorgeous, flavourful pancetta.
Dave’s Pancetta recipe
- 2 lbs. piece of pork belly, with nice layers of fat and meat
Pancetta meat cure
NOTE: Dave does not have precise measurements on this, it is a cure made to taste.
- Sliced garlic: 2-3 cloves to taste
- Fresh thyme
- Fresh juniper
- 1-2 tablespoons of brown sugar
- 1 – 2 teaspoons of cracked black pepper
- 2-3 crumbled bay leaves
- 1-2 teaspoons of combined star anise, nutmeg, fennel seed
- 1-2 tablespoons kosher salt
- 1 tablespoon pink salt
Combine all ingredients well in a bowl.
Rub meat thoroughly with meat cure, ensuring a thorough even coating everywhere.
Place meat in plastic, sealable bag and dump remaining ingredients in.
Remove as much air as possible from bag and then spend a few minutes pressing and mushing the rub further into the meat – the more thorough the cure coating the better.
Place in a pan and then place a heavy, evenly distributed weight on the meat.
Place in refrigerator for 2 weeks, turning daily.
Remove after 2 weeks, wash meat off, pat dry and then rub thoroughly with black pepper.
Tie up with string, place a “date tag” on it and hang in a proper “Chamber” (not a standard refrigerator) a bar fridge or wine fridge is ideal.
Age for 6 months.
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