2kg of K.I. Honey + Three Bottles of Wine – Rose & Al
Rose and Al are friends of mine who live in the Adelaide Hills where they regularly enjoy bacon! No joke, I don’t think I know anyone who loves bacon more than Rose, which is awesome. So it was only fitting that my very first T.I.F.B. trade was with her.
Rose’s family keep bees over on Kangaroo Island, they also make their own wine in the Adelaide Hills. After sampling a little of my maple-cured streaky bacon trial run over Christmas, Rose and Al offered 2kg of Bee Licious honey, and three bottles of Picadilly Hills wine in exchange for a kilo of my finest. I didn’t have to ponder the offer for long; both the honey and the wine are delicious on their own, and will definitely combine nicely if I ever needed to make any Mead…..trade accepted!
As for my part of the deal, this bacon started out as a whole 9kg side of middle belly that I got from a local wholesaler, and cured two ways.
![IMG_2819[1]](http://tradeitforbacon.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/IMG_28191.jpg)
The first half was cured with coarse salt, pink salt, brown sugar and maple syrup which produced a sweet, Canadian style bacon. Not bad, but a tad on the sweet side for my liking, I might scale back the maple syrup next time around.
The second half had a pepper-cure, same as above but with coarse black pepper added instead of the syrup. For the relatively small amount of pepper that I added, this produced a much more savoury and floral tasting bacon. Really peppery and delicious.
Both had about four hours of light smoking with a combination peach wood and Shiraz barrel chips.
Pork – Middle cut (loin to belly)
Origin – Unknown
Cure – 500g x maple-cure + 500g x pepper-cure
Length of cure – 7 days
Smoke – 3.5 hours with peach wood + 0.5 hours with Shiraz barrel chips
Dan the Butcher
Creator, blogger, butcher, chief bacon curer & smoker.
Brice Meat Slicer – Jim from The Lunch Bag
![IMG_2883[1]](http://tradeitforbacon.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/IMG_28831-625x466.jpg)
We sampled the pepper bacon on Saturday, it was perfect with home grown tomatoes and basil on sourdough – freakin’ awesome! Thanks Dan