Lamb Bacon

[Dingo]

Howdy all,
Whilst in Wally World during the week, I noticed they had lamb breast on special. So I thought I'd try Lamb Bacon;

Started off with two small sections of belly;



Boned, trimmed and cured;



I made a cure of;

2 parts salt to 1 part sugar...
1 teaspoon of Pink Salt 1
1 Tbsp x Fennel Seeds
1 Tbsp x Rosemary
1 Tbsp x Cracked Black Pepper
Approx 4lbs Lamb

Mixed, rubbed, zip-lock bagged and now in fridge curing (hopefully)..

I'm thinking 2-3 days then cold smoke? As always..any advice is appreciated.

[wheels]

That's a great choice of herbs/spice to go with the lamb. I look forward to hearing about the resulting bacon.

Phil

[Y@t]

This is going to be good. A friend of mine made some back in November and I hate to say this, but I liked it more than pork. (scratch the last remark or please don't repeat it.) The flavor was so complex!

[salumi512]

I will be trying this. I sounds great.

[Dingo]

Howdy,
Well, work got in the way of my lamb bacon plans, which means that he lamb stayed in the cure for a lot longer than I was planning. I gave it all a water bath for 24hrs and then cut a couple of slice to test for salt;



Surprise surprise....it was excellent. Not to salty..just right. The flavours are complex...starting off with a strong lamb flavour with after tones of the rosemary and fennel.

I will be cold smoking tomorrow. I cant wait to taste it with some smoke flavour added. I'll let you all know how it goes.

[wheels]

Cor, I can imagine that it'll be great with a bit of smoke.

Phil

[Dingo]

OK...so I cold smoked the lamb bacon yesterday ( along with some pepper jack cheese)



I gave it about 4 hours over apple wood. Then stuck it in the freezer for the afternoon.

The Pepper Jack cheese came out awesome...i dont know why I haven;t been smoking cheese from the beginning! I grated some onto a merguez hot dog I made for lunch......

Anyway, sliced and packed the bacon;


The smoke session was light, but imparted a nice balanced smoke flavour to the lamb. You can still taste the fennel and rosemary mixed with the smoke not overpowered. Although my wife preferred the bacon un-smoked. Each to their own I guess.

I'll definitely be playing around with a few lamb bacon recipes!

[wheels]

Result! That looks brilliant.

Phil