Cocoa Loco
Let the games begin! After reading Porsha’s mold-breaking and mind-bending post on Chocolate-Covered Guanciale Toffee this spring, and Scott’s inspired attempt at a cocoa bacon this summer, I’m finally ready to get my hand in the game with my own cocoa-covered bacon. What tipped the scales for me was a jar of Panamanian cocoa nibs from our own amazing local chocolate artisan Dan Schreiber. (We have a clandestine meeting scheduled for tomorrow, where I will slip him some bacon in exchange for some chocolate. The plan is for him to begin experimenting on some chocolate-covered bacon “bars.” Dan, I’ll be cleverly disguised with a fluorescent, pink pig on my head. Look out, Vosges!)
Here’s my current “master cure” for bacon:
for every 5 lbs. of pork belly
40 grams kosher salt
5 grams pink salt
60 grams panela sugar
¼ cup dark amber maple syrup
To complement the cocoa, I added the zest from 2 oranges, and generous pinches of ground allspice, cloves, and cinnamon to the cure. After 8 days in the cure, I rinsed and dried the belly, and then left it out in the fridge to develop a pellicle or tacky skin for the smoke to stick to. I hot-smoked it in the Bradley with maple and apple bisquettes until it reached an internal temperature of 150º F, basting it occasionally with a 50/50 mixture of the maple syrup and panela. This creates a nice, sticky coating for the finely-ground cocoa nibs, which I sprinkled all over as soon as the bacon was done.
I must confess that, for someone who loves bacon, I don’t eat a whole lot of it. But it is absolutely irresistible when it comes hot out of the smoker – there is something indescribably delicious about well-seasoned pork fat just heated up to the point where it becomes meltingly tender. Besides, all those rough ends need to be straightened out for the slicer, so off they come and down they go.
As I hoped, the sweetness of the cure and the basting balanced the bitter, almost “burnt” flavor of the unsweetened, roasted cocoa beans. By coating the finished bacon with the cocoa instead of using it in the cure, the bacon has a clear, distinct cocoa flavor, but it’s not the first thing that you notice, it doesn’t overshadow the richness and sweetness of the pork. The orange and spices are there, as hints in the background, complementing the cocoa, but overall this is pretty subtle, surprisingly sophisticated, for something as garish or gross-sounding as “chocolate bacon.” It’s a refined, high-brow chocolate bacon, if such a thing is possible or even imaginable. I’ll be giving out samples this week, and I hope people will post their reviews here!
You continue to one up me. Well I got one more on you. My next bacon experiment(seeing as how you’ve conquered my cocoa bacon) is mocha bacon. I want to try to come up with a good combination of chocolate and coffee. Your cocoa nibs with some high end fresh roasted, ground coffee beans and some of your panela sugar may be the way. Any suggestions for the coffee?
Ah, Scott, I am just following where others have boldly gone before. Now mocha might well be the final frontier! As you suggest, Scott, some mixture of cocoa nibs and ground coffee sprinkled on the smoked bacon might well be the ne plus ultra. A friend of mine here in town makes some coffee-crusted pork ribs that are out of this world, so I think you’re on the right track. But I have no idea about which coffee to pair with which cocoa beans. Should Panamanian cocoa beans go with Panamanian coffee beans? Important questions like this will take serious contemplation and extensive experimentation. Let us know what you come up with!
Larbo, that is the most divine looking slab of meat I have seen in some time.
I’m still eating my way through the vanilla pink pepper bacon, but once it’s gone, there’s gonna be some serious choco-bacon experimentation on the way
I had my tasty slice this morning with French toast, and that was a perfect combination!
[...] the next methods of flavouring, it occurred to me that I hadn’t yet gotten on Scott and Larbo’s choco-bacon train (though I’ve been meaning to). Being a rabid consumer of my [...]
[...] Not content to nibble, he opened his mouth wide and surprised me by crafting these ingredients into cacao-covered bacon! Bacon is often described as meat candy, but Laurence’s maple-cured, orange zest and cinnamon [...]