Bacon!

This was my second attempt at making bacon.  It turned out very, very good.  This might be my new favorite thing to do.  We decided to invite some friends over to watch Game of Thrones the night I smoked the bacon, so I cut off a few slices to grill and put on burgers.  It was fantastic!  Enjoy!

Album with captions at https://plus.google.com/photos/114710096003730109118/albums/5864673173534066881

Ingredients:

Bacon:

• ~4 lbs pork belly from www.forestfed.com
• 1/3 cup kosher salt
• 1/3 cup brown sugar
• ~2 Tbs fresh ground black pepper

Burgers:

• 1 lb grass fed ground beef from www.polyfacefarms.com
• gluten free buns from www.happytartbakery.com
• 1/4 of a white onion, finely chopped
• 1 egg
• ~2 Tbs worcestershire sauce
• ~2 Tbs dried oregano
• salt
• black pepper
• swiss cheese

Asparagus:

• 2 bunches of asparagus
• ~1 Tbs lemon salt (we have some salt with lemon peel)
• ~2 tsp fresh ground black pepper
• ~1 Tbs roasted garlic olive oil

Salad

• I need to get the ingredients from Carlyn, who makes awesome salads, but she is asleep!

Sweet potato fries

• store bought and made in the oven

Angry Orchard cider was also an invaluable ingredient, if not directly used in food preparation.

Procedure:

Bacon:

Bacon is simple and elegant.  I used a gorgeous slab of forest fed pork belly from www.forestfed.com.  I rinsed it off, patted it dry, then gently rubbed on a cure of half salt and half brown sugar, plus some black pepper.  Then I wrapped the belly in plastic and sealed it in a ziploc bag and put it in the fridge to cure for 6 days, flipping it over every day for even curing.  When it was ready, I rinsed off the excess cure, and was pleasantly surprised that most of the black pepper stayed on while the extra salt and sugar dissolved off.  I did not rinse my first batch of bacon and it turned out too salty.  Rinsing is a critical step!  After rinsing, I patted it dry.  Next came smoking.  When smoking bacon, you are not cooking it, you are further curing it by drying it out, and adding the smoke flavor.  So you want the smoker to be at a low temperature, around 140-180.  As you can see in the pictures, I added a second thermometer to my smoker, the stock Warm/Ideal/Hot indicator is not good enough for keeping a specific temperature.  This cost about $10 and is absolutely worth it.  I smoked the bacon for about 4.5 hours, adding apple wood chips regularly.  Dinner was a little earlier than 4.5 hours, so I took it out and sliced a few pieces off early to grill and put on the burgers.

Burgers:

For burgers, I did my normal procedure.  Whisk 1 egg per pound of meat, add the seasonings and mix in with the egg.  Add the meat and mix thoroughly by hand.  Make patties, thin in the middle so you end up with burgers, not meatballs.  The grass fed beef was from Polyface farms (www.polyfacefarms.com), and it was fantastic.  Usually, I eat burgers with no bun, but this time we got buns from our local gluten free bakery, the Happy Tart (www.happytartbakery.com).  I toasted them on the grill (in the same spot I had cooked the bacon...) and they were awesome!  I also made Sriracha mayo by, you guessed it, mixing Sriracha and mayo until the heat was where I wanted it.  This went on the buns and was used to dip the sweet potato fries.

Asparagus:

The asparagus was simply tossed with oil, salt, and pepper, and grilled.  I got it off the grill at exactly the right time, when it still has a good snap to it.  It was by far the best asparagus I’ve ever made.

Resulting Deliciousness:

This was a great meal with great friends.  I don’t think I’d change a single thing about it.  It was a perfect pre- Game of Thrones hangout!  The bacon turned out fantastic, I can’t wait to eat the other 3.75 pounds of it!

Locally Raised Grass-Fed Beef Burgers

Last weekend, I went home to Hendersonville, NC. We picked up some local grass fed ground beef and made some killer burgers. We also grilled some sliced up vegetables and whole ears of corn.

Ingredients:

• Burgers
• 2lbs ground beef from local grass fed cows.
• 1/2 an onion, finely diced
• 1 egg
• Oregano
  
• Worcestershire
  
• Dales
• Black pepper
• Paprika
• Garlic powder
• Corn (whole ears)
  
• Eggplant
• Zuccini
• Onion
• Sweet potato
• Red bell pepper
  
• Cherries
• Olive oil
• Kosher salt
• Black pepper

Procedure:
This was about as straight forward as it gets. I mixed all the burger ingredients together and made 8 1/4 pound patties. While I did that, others cut up the vegetables and covered them in olive oil, salt and pepper, and cleaned up the corn. The patties went on the grill, the vegetables went in a grill basket, and the corn went up on the top rack. This was the first time I used my dad's new grill, and it was great.
Because we used grass-fed beef, I grilled the burgers at slightly lower heat than I might have used for standard corn fed. For burgers, this really isn't necessary because of the standard mix of lean meat and fat. However, for non-ground, real cuts, you normally need to cook grass fed beef a little slower and have to be more careful about overcooking. This is because grass fed beef generally has less fat, and the fat acts a little different than that in corn fed beef. This makes grass fed less forgiving and easier to burn. The healthier product and superior taste is well worth it.

Resulting Deliciousness:
The grass-fed burgers were fantastic. It's amazing how much grass-fed beef tastes more like beef than corn-fed. Grass-fed beef has a more full, robust flavor that will prove it's superiority over corn-fed even if you don't know the somewhat disgusting fact about how corn-fed cows are raised.
The vegetables turned out well too. the grill basket was filled to the point of overflowing, but everything still cooked through evenly. The cherries that my brother, Sam, through in were awesome. Grilled cherries are a new one for me.
The corn was some of the best grilled corn I've ever had. We didn't soak it or anything, so I was a little worried. But, it cooked well on the top rack. At one point, I moved the corn down to where the burgers had cooked and some of the husks caught on fire. I was afraid there would be a burnt flavor, but it turned out to taste kind of smoked. It was delicious... of course, the butter didn't hurt.

It's been a while since I've had grass-fed beef, but you can count on seeing a lot more of it on this blog, along with more free range naturally raised meat. Beyond the moral, health, and environmental reasons for going with this type of food, it simply tastes a whole lot better.