Uncured Bacon?

[greybeard]

It's not just "fancy sandwich shops" that called them that. For many years, pork belly futures were a commodity and were traded on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. You would likely see it every evening on the news after the exchange rang their closing bell ..usually at the end of the market report. Trading in PB stopped about 5 years ago tho.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/31/us/31porkbelly.html
http://www.wikinvest.com/futures/Pork_Bellies_Futures

 

[Bruce]

That is interesting given pork belly is (I think) primarily used for bacon and a lot of bacon is sold in this country.

 

[greybeard]

Not many people would be interested in trading meat on that scale. Individual Lots were 40,000lbs.
Pork futures are still traded on CME but nowadays under the more socially accepted description of "Lean hogs" or "Lean pork".

 

[AClark]

If u don't cure your bacon then u want to hot smoke/ cook your bacon. With cure u can cold smoke it. The cure is what keeps bacteria from forming. So if you don't cure and u try to cold smoke then u could be asking to get sick

Exactly why we brine ours, salt kills lots of nasty stuff!

 

[AClark]

@greybeard so that's what lean pork means. I watch the exchange in the mornings (RFD) while I'm trying to wake up.

Not sure even my huge family could ever eat 40k lbs of bacon, and we LOVE bacon lol.

 

[Mike CHS]

Our butcher makes hog jowl bacon and it is awesome.

 

[Bruce]

Not sure even my huge family could ever eat 40k lbs of bacon, and we LOVE bacon lol.

Plus, where would you get a refrigerator big enough to brine 40K pounds of pork belly and a smoker big enough to finish it off!!

 

[AClark]

You'd have to like rent a big walk in or buy one or something I'd think, and you could only handle it a couple of lbs at a time. Realistically, it would freezer burn before you could ever process it all without commercial equipment.
That said, I have a very large refrigerator (imagine that, right?) a chest freezer and a standing freezer. I've managed to get 200 lbs of hog in one freezer with room to spare though. I did the butchering, the cuts, and vacuum sealed it all.

That said, we have no problem eating at least 5 lbs of bacon a month, if not more. Pork belly is cheaper than bacon (seriously, bacon is ridiculously priced) and even though it's more work, sort of, that's how we do it. The time it takes is minimal since it's mostly sit time, takes 5 minutes to prep then it sits for hours.

 

[Bruce]

I've managed to get 200 lbs of hog in one freezer with room to spare though.

Impressive, though a far cry from 40,000 pounds!

 

[AClark]

It's all about how you cut it so you can stack it! It was like playing freezer Tetris.