Pancetta

On not buying meat

I don’t buy much meat. I came to the conclusion a few years ago. After a hiatus of not hunting almost at all for some years I was given access to fantastic opportunities both in terms of place and in terms of time. I threw myself into it as if I was eighteen again, just gotten my first shotgun and all my licenses. Where I live there are no excuses for not getting out there and even fewer excuses to not take full ownership of your own killing. It is a privilege that most people don’t have, anywhere.

So most of my animal protein I take myself or am given by, or trade with, others who in turn have taken theirs the same way. There are a screed of upsides with aiming to not buy meat, one of them being that you eat less of it.

I still buy farmed when it is the kind where a little will go a long way, ideally paired with something that wild meat cannot deliver. For most hunters, me included, that means pork.

In my case it’s pork belly salted and dried into pancetta. I don’t have fancy equipment. No dry-aging locker (either home-made or otherwise) and because I use the finished products in small increments I stick to the very basics, salted meat dry-aged on a rack (that is actually a small barbecue rack for fish I think) in my fridge. What little knowledge I have I got from Ruhlman/Polcyn and Hank Shaw. The simplest of preparations.

Yesterday I pulled out a small batch of pancetta, sliced it thinly, vacuum-packed and froze. These slices will last me a long time. The final product is absolutely simple while at the same time being complex enough that a very small amount can, (much like similar preserved products like salted lemons or fish sauce), edge a sauce or a stew or a ragú from good to stunning.

My senses and hands have had the privilege of making something together, of transforming one or two things into another. Making pancetta makes me feel capable. It and its cousins are what keeps me going at anything.