Smoking

Belly, in the smoker

 A few quick pictures of our bacon process.  We got 6 beautiful pork bellies from Ken at Polka Dot Pastures and usually we roast or confit them as an appetizer or component to a dish.  With so many bellies we decided to make our own bacon.

We start with a simple sugar and salt cure and let the bellies sit for at least a week.  After the cure it's off to the smoker.  The bellies are hot smoked at a low temperature for most of the day.  Apple wood chips soaked in our own Hinterland Maple Bock is the smoke flavor of choice.

After the smoke the belly rests (it's been on a real wild ride) and cools.  Once it is completely cool the bacon is ready to be eaten.

Belly, transformed into bacon

On the bottom of the post you will see a glimpse of a dish we are running this weekend.  As a tribute to all the wonderful hog we've been getting the Chef's decided to create a sampler pig plate.  Included are pork rillettes (made from the jowels), a brat (award winning I might add) and a pork croquette (our play on head cheese), all served with mustard, gherkins, and frisee salad.

Snout to tail

Recently we recieved 3 whole heritage breed hogs and 1 veal calf at the Hinterland kitchen.  These animals were raised specifically for us and we are pretty excited to show what we've been doing with them.  It goes without saying that we are truly embracing head to tail cooking in regards to these animals, everything is going to be used.  In the coming weeks we will start showing what we've done with animals and how they will be appearing on the menu.  To start off, something simple, spare ribs. Here is a quick picture tour of what we did with the spare ribs currently featured on our lounge menu.  Enjoy!

We start with a cure, brown sugar, chili's, salt.

After a days cure, we smoke them, low and slow

After smoking, the ribs are still a bit tough, so we finish them sous vide style to get them just tender

Ready for you to eat, Hinterland IPA BBQ glaze, cornbread, spicy apple slaw