Tesa

Ah, pork.

More specifically: ah, pork belly. This cut of meat from the pig offers itself perfectly to curing whether it is bacon, pancetta, or, as in here, tesa. While bacon is often, though not always, smoked both pancetta and tesa are unsmoked pork belly. Tesa differs from pancetta in that it is not rolled up and remains flat during curing, which gives it its name which means "extended".

Ready for the refrigerator

Tesa is a salt cured pork belly. The purpose of curing any meat, whether it is fermented or salted, is to prevent it from spoiling, which was particularly useful before refrigeration. Here, salt is used as preservative that essentially enhances dehydration of the meat. Microorganisms love water and most need it to grow thus by speeding up dehydration one is preventing those microorganisms from taking over. Most cured meats also need nitrate in order to be correctly preserved, though. This often comes in the form of what is called "Insta Cure no. 1", which is a mixture of salt and sodium nitrate. It is an effective inhibitor of bacterial growth (including the infamous botulism), but also changes the flavor and color of the meat. Nitrate is converted by bacteria (not bad) in the meat to nitrite that can then react with myoglobin giving cured meat the distinct color we associate with it.

Curing is quite the precise process - requires an accurate scale

I followed the recipe in Paul Bertolli's "Cooking by Hand". The seasonings called for include red pepper flakes, juniper berries, allspice berries, black peppercorns, cloves, and nutmeg. Wine is used to help encourage the salt rub to enter the meat. I was excited when I found this recipe because you only needed a refrigerator that was at least below 40 degrees. Many cured meats require a precise temperature and humidity range for the fermentation and curing process, which calls for a specialty curing chamber or, if you're lucky, a basement with the right conditions. All I needed to do was rub the salt with the spices over the pork belly, sprinkle some wine on it, and leave it in the fridge for 7-14 days until the salt has penetrated to the center of the belly.

Serious nutmeg grating concentration

Tesa is great in all the applications that you usually associate with bacon and pancetta: building sauces, fried by itself, sandwiches, and lardons in salads.


We'll see how it turns out soon!