Pork belly

A longhouse calls for pork, right? This is a test run of a piece of pork belly boiled, sliced, glazed and fried. I plan to do the boiling and slicing at home and the rest on site.

I used the following for the test:

500 g salted pork belly

500 ml water

2 tsp salt

50 ml elderflower cordial

1 tsp rosemary

1 tsp mustard powder

And then I glazed it with:

1 tbsp honey

1 tsp malt vinegar

0,5 tsp mustard

a little fresh horseradish

salt

I am a bit unsure about the use of rosemary for Viking age and might use some other herb the next time. For the real deal I will probably also put more salt and spices in the cooking water since the meat itself could have been spicier. All in all it was rather good, though.

Dried meat

Náttfari and I both like beef jerky. He likes his chili-hot, I can do with less heat. We are prepping some meat for bringing to Double Wars. The first batch is drying on low heat (ca 75 degrees C) in the oven now. It was about 1 kg before trimming off fat and stuff. It was soaked for almost 24 hours in:

75 ml sea salt
75 ml cane sugar
75 ml white balsamic vinegar
0,5 tbsp black pepper
0,5 tbsp long pepper
2 cloves of garlic
2 tsp ground dried onion

First tasting suggests that using less salt or pickling it for a shorter time might be better. There is also probably no such things as to much garlic, so I could have used more. The recipe was an adaption of this recipe found at Foodily.