Recipe for homemade guanciale
I love spaghetti carbonara and I typically make it with cream and bacon. We Danes usually tend to use bacon for carbonara, even though many of us are under the impression that the Italians actually use pancetta. I used to think so too, but when I found out that Italians actually don’t use pancetta, but guanciale, I had to try making it myself.
Guanciale is a bit fattier than pancetta, and while pancetta comes from the belly, guanciale is cut from the cheek – and it is not smoked.
So, the guanciale project started. The first step was to buy pork cheeks, which was not possible. So, the hunt began for some pork jowls, which is not always easy – especially if you want them fresh! But I did find 5 small fresh pig jowls, from which I made my homemade guanciale. And here you see how I did it.
Homemade guanciale recipe
Homemade guanciale
Ingredients
- 5 pcs. Prok Cheeks
- 75 gram Salt
- 75 gram Nitrite Salt
- 42.5 gram Sugar
- 9.5 gram Garlic Powder
- 2 gram Thyme ground
- 2.3 gram Peppercorns black and crushed - use pepper from a grinder as an alternative
- 4 pcs. Bay Leaf crushed
Instructions
- Trim the jowls of the worst and largest tendons.
- Crush bay leaves and peppercorns in a mortar/blender and mix them with thyme, garlic powder, sugar, salt, and nitrite salt.
- Mix everything together in a bag/container along with the jowls.
- Massage the mixture thoroughly into the meat and place it in the fridge.
- Basically, we are now engaging in a curing process where the meat "cooks" by drawing out the liquid.
- The meat should sit for 3-7 days, depending on how salty you want it to be. My jowls were quite small, so they spent 3 days in the refrigerator.
- The jowls should be firm at the thickest point, then you are done.
- Rinse them thoroughly under cold tap water.
- Dry them thoroughly.
- Now the meat should dry/age for at least 3 weeks (but preferably 6 weeks) before being eaten.
- I am lucky to own a maturing cabinet, so I can easily just place my meat in there.
- Of course, most people do not have that. So you can choose to dry your meat using a dry-aging bag or do the following:
- Scald a meat needle and poke a hole in the top of each jowl. Thread a string through and hang them to dry in a place that is dry, cool, and has at least 65% humidity.