Ok,
Two weeks ago Moose hunting season kicked off here in Sweden.
South Sweden is a little bit short on them, central Sweden is suffering from wolves so, not much hunting there, and northern Sweden - plenty of them as usual.
Result was our hunting team also opted in the wild boar. Nothing fell by my own gun/hand, but, two days gave 6 wild boars, one moose "kid" and one fox.
One of the wild boars came with me home, as the rest of the hunting team had their freezers bulging already.
When parting it up - I figured I'd try something new.
So, basically - I did "bacon" cut, I did what is called "pig neck" cut and I also did "Christmas Ham" cut. - along with a few other, more "common" cut types.
The bacon-cut:
I made a mix of salt, sugar and regular pepper (black - small pellets) and used it as a "rub" on the bacon cuts. The salt of course contained nitrit (the component which should prevent botulism building up).
All went into vaccum packings and stayed in fridge for 7 days, turning them over every second day.
Yesterday - time to smoke.
Due to Weber Smokey Mountain not really working well with cold smoking (and only one type of smoking powder) I spoke to a friend working as a chef in restaurant and he said - warm smoke is ok too.
Not tried it before, I was a little concerned as I had not tried out temperatures, amount of briquettes, water level etc etc..
But, almost full open regulators, a champagne cooler size of water plus another jug of water, and plenty of briquettes and doing the "small amount of hot burning briquettes in center on non-burning briquettes"-lightning method, I ended up on a pretty fixed temperature just above 100 degree celcius. Little too hot according to my chef friend but - first try so - something to experiment with next rounds.
Anyhow - some water drips on the meat after rougly 50 minutes and also a turn, and passing a total of 1h30 min, time to get them out.
And - voila. Not exactly like bacon usually looks (have not tried them yet - want the smoke to "even out" in them so, tonight - there's going to be a test. ) but, let's see where this will end up.
Enjoy,
WeberSwede