In stock show judging, the judges look for certain things. After a show, you can pretty much tell what that judge thinks is a good hog. This post is to show that a good show pig may not be a good meat pig.
A disclaimer, though -- both of these hogs didn't do too well in their showing this year, so you don't have a first and last place kind of thing, but ....well, you'll see.
Now to the pictures. There are two different sides here, one from a cross, one from a berk. The cross on the left, the berk is on the right. From a judges standpoint, the cross probably looked better because he was long, lean, well muscled. Looking at the meat -- at least in terms of bacon, and the berk wins by a long shot.
What do you think?This was my third time making bacon. Best by far, I think I've got it down.
The first time, I used a dry cure, but used two different curing mixtures. The first one was Morton's Sugar Cure, with smoke flavoring. The second mixture was home-made, it had homemade maple syrup, sugar, salt & pepper. To be honest, I couldn't tell a difference in the flavor. I let these bellies cure for 1 week, then they were smoked. The end-result was "full-flavor" -- much saltier than you get in a store, but I grew to really like it. This was from a pig we butchered in Kansas.
The second attempt was a failure to me...I tried a wet cure. Essentially all I did was make a brine using the dry-cure ingredients. I added enough cure that it would float an egg. I'd read somewhere that's how much you should do. Let that cure for about 5 days and then smoked it. It didn't taste much like bacon, although it did taste a bit like ham. This was one of the sides of the cross, so I'm not sure if that has anything to do with it. I did decide that when I go to cure the hams, I'll probably try this method first.
So this time, I tried the Morton's sugar cure, but I added two or three tablespoons of black pepper. I like peppered bacon and thought it might taste good. I let this cure for 4 days (I stack them in ziplock bags two-high in the fridge....so each cut gets a day face up and a day face down both on bottom and on top.) After curing, I rinsed off the cure and let it sit in warm water for a few hours. Then it was out to dry so I could smoke it. I tested some this morning, it doesn't need smoking, so I'll just leave it as is. It's pretty tasty!
