Pancetta Tesa

  This was my first attempt at actually dry curing meat using my curing chamber.  I decided to try pancetta first since I was already purchasing pork belly for bacon. Pancetta also requires less supplies needed to cure it, such as casings, twine, or even a mold spray, which some other whole muscle cuts need to cure. The two most common types of pancetta are arrotolata and tesa. Arrotolata is the rolled up shape that most Americans think of when they think of pancetta. When curing using the arrotolata style, the belly must be rolled up tight to prevent any space from left open in the middle of the roll, for this reason sodium nitrate is usually called for in the cure. The other style, tesa, is just cured by hanging it as is after it is cured, and does not call for nitrates due to there being no chance of dead air space inside the meat. The only bad thing about having air pockets is that botulism can form, since it is anaerobic.

  The first thing I had to do when making this, was cut a section of the whole belly I used in the previous savory bacon post. I then trimmed the piece of any overhanging flaps of meat. The final weight of the piece of meat was 44.60 oz. 
 

 Next up was to create the cure. The cure I used is similar to the savory bacon, but with a few less flavors that would overpower the pork taste.
The original recipe was for 10 lbs of belly, which I then cut by 1/4th, except for the salt, which I kept at 3% of the weight of the meat.

 Just like the bacon, this will then go into the appropriate sized Ziploc bag and go into the fridge for 5 days, flipping daily and re-rubbing the cure at least once halfway through. Once this process is finished, it needs to be rinsed under cold water to remove all of the cure/seasoning. The next thing I had to do was to pat dry the meat and find out the final weight before it is placed into the curing chamber. 

 The final weight of the meat was 44.25oz (1256g) and to be considered finished, it has to hang until it loses 30% of its weight, which should be a final weight of 31oz (869g). To hang the meat in the chamber, all I had to do was puncture a hole in the corner of the belly and run a piece of twine to hang it with.  The only thing left to do was to wait and weigh the meat every couple days after waiting two weeks.

The finished product ended up taking just over three weeks in the curing chamber to hit 30% weight loss.










The pancetta can be eaten raw since it lost 30% of its weight, but I prefer it cooked.  It seemed to be very chewy compared to other cured meats.  I am not sure if this was due to not using a slicer to get a paper thin cut, or if this is how belly is compared to say prosciutto.

Spaghetti alla Carbonara is one of the more popular dishes using pancetta.