Note: I moved this post here, which I originally posted in the general show discussion thread:
In the September 18, 2015 show either Doug or Jonathan ( I forget who ) mentioned working on a recipe for pancetta. I've made it several times so maybe this info will be useful:
I use the spices from the site below minus the brown sugar, I use xylytol instead, and of course fresh is better than dried if you can find it. For example, whole nutmeg, pepper corns, and garlic can be prepped from whole items instead of using off the shelf powders.
http://www.mamaliga.com/charcuterie/home-cured-pancetta
This image from the site show proportions:
Nutmeg
Bay leaf
Thyme
Garlic
Black pepper
Sea salt
Xylytol
Cover the pork belly in the spice mix then put it on a rack in a pan in the frig, covered. That lets the liquids in the pork belly drop down into the bottom. Removal of some of the liquid helps the pork belly become firmer and the flavors concentrate. I use a roasting pan for turkey since the one I bought came with a rack.
I usually leave it in the frig for 7 to 10 days - I might pull it out at about 4 to 5 days and cut a tiny sample to taste how the salt is penetrating, that helps avoid it becoming too salty. When the initial waiting is done I take it out, rinse off the spices, re-apply new spice - this time usually only black pepper, sea salt, thyme, and xylytol.
It can be hung unrolled as in the pics at the site above, or rolled and tied like on this page:
http://www.ciaprochef.com/fbi/recipes/Dry-curedPancetta.html
So far I've always rolled and tied it.
If you decide to roll and tie then be sure to roll it up so that there aren't any air pockets between the rolled layers otherwise you might wind up with mold in between. Mold isn't necessarily a bad thing, it can impart some nice flavor, but that depends on the type of mold the forms, and figuring that out might not be simple, could be very risky.
And if you roll it then roll it with the fattiest side outward, other the surface of the exposed meat tends to dry rather hard like jerky. That's not necessarily a bad thing either, depends on what you like.
After getting it tied I hang it up for at least a month in the kitchen - the humidity in the house is probably 30% to 40%, sometimes less, on rare occasions a bit more - whatever the mostly dry weather around here brings. If you're not rolling it up then hang time could probably be much less.
