Next in the Odyssey of cured meats: pancetta. We bought a pork belly, and followed a process similar to the bresaola: rubbed it with a mixture of salt, sugar, Insta Cure #1, and some herbs and spices. We then placed it in the fridge for a week, turning it every other day. After that, we washed off the cure with warm water and returned the meat to the fridge to air dry for 4 to 6 hours. Next, we rolled it into a tight cylinder, starting from the thick side, and tied it securely with string. We then placed it in Cur’an (our fridge) at Temp: 10°C, RH: 67.5%. We pulled it at the target weight loss (about 30%), then vacuum packed it to be used at a later date.

Takeaways:
1) DO NOT wrap the meat in cheesecloth to cure, even if the recipe tells you to do so (like ours did). Cheesecloth invites bad mold. (Another good lesson: don’t believe everything you read!) Luckily, I took off the cheesecloth the minute I found out and we had no bad mold.
2) Moisture loss varies. When curing things with lots of fat, like a pork belly, you have to consider the fact that your fat in your pork belly will not lose water so you might not hit your target weight loss exactly.
3) Determinants of colour? For whatever reason, the result was not as pink as what I wanted it to be (again!). We have more research to do here. Needless to say, there will be some more rounds of pancetta again soon.