Strolling by the meat case at the Slingerlands-Chops I spied the above jowl bacon. For people who don't speak bacon, this product is made from the jowl area as opposed to our usual side or belly bacon. I haven't done a good ol' bacon post in quite a while, so I thought I would brighten your Tuesday with some greasy goodness.
The jowl bacon was pretty affordable, I forget, but about 3 and change per pound. In appearance it is similar to normal bacons, maybe a bit fattier. Being from the jowl area it is sort of half moon shaped. I figured the only way to do the meat justice was to break out the old cast iron skillet.
The extra fat content in this stuff makes the cooking process a little delicate, if you agitate the bacon too much you are left with little scraps of meat as the fat melts. I would go low and slow with the stuff, or bake it which is actually my preferred way of achieving maximum bacon crisposity. Here we have some cooked jowl.
We have here a taste very similar to run of the mill smoked bacon. The jowl does have a sweeter, "porkier" flavor to the meat. It gives a lot of grease, which makes this stuff excellently suited for use as a "seasoning" bacon as opposed to an eat it by itself bacon. A bunch of the stuff in some bean/lentil/pea soup would be delicious. In this case, I made a sandwich.
As I said the jowl is very fatty so you are left with some definitively chewy bits. As I age I find myself less likely to reject something that is "chewy" or "fatty." I go ahead and chew the fat with relish. I have spoken on the issue before, but I find it interesting that there are cultural differences in the enjoyment of not only flavor, but texture. Western cuisine often turns up its nose at chewy/fatty meat whereas many Asian cuisines embrace it. Our loss.
Quite a coincidence -- just this past weekend I made a batch of sausages, including a French-style garlic sausage. My secret ingredient for these is smoked pork jowls.
ReplyDeleteI took a night course at a local cooking school and the instructor introduced us to pork jowls. In my opinion, there is no finer fat to add to sausage. It's not only the fat in the jowls, either; it's the lovely broken-down cellulose that adds the lip-smacking juiciness to these things.
If you make sausage, give it a try. We used about 10 lbs of leg meat to two jowls (about 4-5 lbs I think). A bulb and a half of pureed garlic and some salt, pepper, and tarragon were the only other additions. Unbelievable stuff.
I am an amateur (maybe hack?) sausage maker myself. I think jowl would be delicious in sausage, I usually use bellies for added fat.
ReplyDeletemmmm fatty face bacon.
ReplyDeletefyi....PC in Latham also sells the same brand sliced Jowl Bacon in chunks...for about 50 cents less per lb. I'm sure it will be at the other PC's as well.
ReplyDeleteI usually use bellies for added fat.
ReplyDeleteWe still use bellies for our Italian and cured sausages, too. But jowls are an amazing addition to some kinds of sausage -- I do recommend trying it some time.
(Btw, in our most recent fat, the belly we bought was incredibly meaty, about 10-20% fat at most -- much less than the shoulder and legs we bought! Very annoying. I haven't seen such a lean pork belly before -- obviously this pig was training for the olympics or somesuch.)
Hey, thanks for the tip. It's been a couple years since I saw smoked jowl around here, but after reading your post I went down to the Windsor Locks P-Chops just south of here, and there it was! Porcine Joy!
ReplyDeleteAlso found cheese curds, which was purely bonus. There is poutine in my future.
See -- Canucks start commenting on your blog, and suddenly you're eating poutine. We're a crafty bunch!
ReplyDelete(Seriously, I don't remember if I've commented before but I've been reading your blog for a while and have really been enjoying it. Cheers.)
Pork jowl tends to be a little chewier than traditional bacon. You hit the nail on the head with the "low and slow" method to cook it. I actually prefer it over traditional bacon.
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