Bacon & Bees

I woke early on Saturday and, after letting out the chickens, I wandered over to my smoke box.

As I approached I could smell a faint aroma of wood smoke and I couldn't resist a peep inside. As soon as I removed the front panel I was rewarded with the most fantastic aroma and the sight of a beautifully smoked loin of pork

The eighteen hours of smoking had turned the skin an amazing tan colour with a very firm texture* and I could see that hand slicing the rashers was going to be a pig of a job.  I'd anticipated this challenge and had decided that today should be the first outing for my new bacon slicer.**

Once breakfasted, TP and I headed out to the garage with the loin and he guided me through the finer points of the slicer's use. It worked beautifully, slicing through the firm rind and soft meat with ease and within twenty minutes we had about 7lb of smoked back bacon rashers and a few lardons.

I then headed back in to the house with the bacon and my vacuum packer and spent the rest of the morning getting this lot packed, labelled and stored in the freezer.

The rest of the day was equally productive, dogs were walked, bees were inspected, the slicer was cleaned*** and gin was consumed in the garden.

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*  I usually remove the skin before curing as it can be very challenging to hand slice. On this occasion I was just too lazy short of time, so decided to get the cure underway and deal with the bacon rind at the end of the process.

** This mechanical marvel had been lurking untested in the garage for about 18 months and had arrived courtesy of TP.  The brief back story is that TP had worked in a Delicatessen whilst he was a student at USW's Cardiff Campus. The Deli had an absolutely fantastic meat slicer that was going spare and a deal was done. This allowed me to replace the decrepit slicer that I had given up on using years ago.

*** As I scrubbed the slicer I asked TP how it used to be cleaned when he worked at the Deli. He took one look at the blade guard in my hand and said " we never used to take that off". I commented on the food hygiene certification of the establishment and he grinned and advised that he only used to get paid £8 an hour.