Heat is the enemy when you are making pie crust. If you want a good flaky crust, you need to keep it cold until you put it in the oven.

The recipe I use, which makes enough for a nine inch double crust or two single crusts, is as follows:

2 ½ C all purpose flour
2 sticks cold butter
1 T sugar
2 tsp salt
¼ C icy cold vodka
¼ C ice water

Instead of vodka you could use white or apple cider vinegar (chill it). Naptown Bill says he grandmother uses sparkling dry white wine or champagne in her pie crust. I may give that or sparkling water a try.

Mix the flour, salt, and sugar in a bowl. Cut the butter into cubes and toss with the flour.

Stick the bowl in the freezer. I also put the blade from my food processor in the freezer as well. After at least one half hour, I put the flour/butter mixture into the bowl of the food processor and give it a few pulses. Don’t over mix, you want the butter to remain in chunks.

Next add the quarter cup of vodka while pulsing the food processor.

(No! Don’t drink it! Put it in the dough.) I keep my vodka in the freezer, so it is ready to go. I keep a pitcher of water in the refrigerator and add ice cubes when I start making pie dough. Add the ice water, a tablespoon at a time until the dough starts to come together. It will still be pretty shaggy. The way to test if you have added enough water is to squeeze a handful. If it crumbles, you need to add a little more. If it breaks into big chunks, it is ready.

Cut a big piece of plastic wrap and dump the dough onto it. It won’t really seem like dough yet. That’s ok as long as you can form it into two discs – about six inches in diameter. Wrap each in plastic and put it in the refrigerator. You should still be able to see pieces of butter in the dough.

As it sits in the fridge, the flour will absorb the water and it will be less crumbly and shaggy.

I like to make pretty things, so when I saw the rose apple pie all over the internet, I had to give it a try. I don’t know who deserves the credit for inventing it. This one has an excellent tutorial for slicing the apples and making the rose. I didn’t really like the recipe though. So I added my own small touches.

If you want to do the rose design, follow the tutorial. Here are my tips and changes. You need about four medium apples. If they’re small, use five, if they’re big use three.

I increased the cinnamon and nutmeg to ½ teaspoon each and added ½ teaspoon of ground ginger and added to the sugar. Then I tossed the slices with the sugar mix and let it sit.

This lets the juice release and creates the liquid you will use for the caramel sauce.

While the apples are macerating, take one of your pie dough discs out of the fridge. Sprinkle a little flour on a cutting board and roll it out. Press hard when rolling because it will be stiff. You want to make as few passes as possible. Flip the dough every two or three passes and more flour as needed to keep it from sticking. When it’s rolled out big enough, use your pie plate as a guide and cut around it. Remember to leave plenty of room around it to account for the depth. Press the dough into the pie plate and dock it with a fork.

After the apple slices have sat for about ½ hour, you need to remove them from the liquid and squeeze the liquid out. I wear gloves for this and laying out the slices because it is ….sticky.

That’s also why I have no pictures of the process. (See the tutorial).

Preheat the oven to 375 now. It took me about five minutes more than the preheat time to lay out the apple slices. The tutorial I linked above says to overlap the ends of the slices. I think that makes the pie too ‘loose’, it creates gaps. I like my apple pie to be packed with apples. So, I put them end to end.

Start on the outside and just keep going until it is all filled in. Lastly, curl one slice and stick in the center. Cover the pie with foil and bake for about 40 minutes or until the apples are the texture you like. You can test it with a knife. Not only should the knife slide in easily, it should also slide out easily. Then bake uncovered for another 10 minutes until the crust and apples are golden. Look at the flaky crust!

While the pie is baking, make the caramel sauce with the reserved apple liquid. I added a tsp of vanilla and ¼ C of bourbon (No!, Don’t drink it! – honestly, you people.) Then reduce it to about half the volume. When it is almost done, the bubbles change. It becomes thicker and the bubbles are bigger and almost glossy.

At this point, turn off the heat and slowly pour in some cream. I am always a little nervous making caramel sauce because a work colleague de-gloved two fingers when he spilled some. He had to have two surgeries and it took months to recover. Caramel is no joke.

When you are ready to serve, pour caramel sauce over the pie.

I mean come on, it’s bacon. You want a good reason to hate on Joos, Mooslims and vegetarians/vegans? They don’t eat pork, which means they don’t eat bacon. In this two part series, we’ll go through the process of creating two glorious versions of pork belly, smoked bacon and Pancetta.

Today we do bacon. To start with, we need some fresh pork belly (also called pork sides). We have Cash & Carry here, which carries good quality products at reasonable prices. What you want to look for when making bacon, is a slab that is 2/3 meat to 1/3 fat. I find half bellies work best for me.

What we need next is to calculate the proper amount of Cure #1 (pink salt), salt and sugar. Cure #1 contains 6.25% of Nitrite, with the rest being Sodium Chloride. The FDA guidelines for Cure #1 & 2 is 1.1gm per pound. This is approximately 1tsp per five pounds of meat. A great way to figure out your quantities is to use a cure calculator. The best one I know of is the one on the Digging Dogs Farm website. Do yourself a favor and purchase a decent scale that will do small quantities. This is the one I use:

Buy the 100gm calibration weight too.

A note on Sodium Nitrite and Nitrate:

Unless you’re eating quantities of cured meats on a regular basis, you may rest easy when it comes to the bogeyman that is Nitrites/Nitrates.

“According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), your daily intake of sodium nitrate shouldn’t be more than 3.7 milligrams per kilo of body weight.”

For someone weighing 150 pounds, that equates to .25gm. A five pound slab of bacon contains .34gm of pure Nitrite.

Sodium Nitrite is commonly known as Cure #1 and is typically used for meats that only undergo short term curing, usually two weeks or less. Sodium Nitrate, known as Cure #2 is used for longer curing meats such as salami. The Sodium Nitrate breaks down over time and converts to Sodium Nitrite, basically making it a time release source of Sodium Nitrite.

Celery juice “substitute”. Yeah, the naturally occurring Sodium Nitrate in celery is chemically converted to Sodium Nitrite, or left as Nitrate. You’re using the same chemical to cure your meat. This is known as “marketing”. To stay  within FDA guidelines, the same quantities of both are used, regardless of source.

Okay, we used the calculator, we measure out our curing mix, now we need to add other flavorings, if you so choose. You can use whatever strikes your fancy. I’ve found what works well for me is to add a good amount of black pepper, granulated garlic and ground bay leaves. Mix this all up with your cure and rub it evenly over your rinsed, and dried belly. Rub it in good. At this point, we need to wrap it and let it rest. You can buy 2 gallon zip lock bags, which work very well, or if you have a vacuum sealer that can do large bags, it’s a great option. I think the vacuum sealing results in better penetration of the cure. Next, into the refrigerator for 10-14 days. I like two weeks. I think it produces good flavor and you know your cure has penetrated all the way through. Every couple of days, flip the package over and rub the meat. Liquid will appear in the first few days and then most of it will gradually reabsorb.

After we’re done curing our belly, it’s time to prep for smoking. Rinse all of the cure and flavorings off the belly and dry it well. Now it needs to go back on a rack in the fridge for 2-4 days. This will allow the surface to dry and form a pellicle, which is a slighty sticky surface the smoke will adhere to. This is also where you can add things like black pepper to turn it into pepper bacon just before smoking.

Cold smoking versus hot smoking:

Cold smoking will give you a product with a nice flavor and a finer crisp texture when the bacon is cooked. The bacon will still be raw when it’s done smoking. If you’re going to cold smoke, follow the directions on your smoker. Not all of them are capable of cold smoking. I have a quality electric smoker which allows me to control the conditions quite well, but it does put out a lot of smoke in the beginning, so I’ve had to develop process where I don’t over smoke the bacon, which will result in a product that smells like a campfire. The timing for cold smoking also varies widely. Some are capable of cold smoking for several days. In my situation, it’s about 4-6 hours or else there will be too much smoke.

Hot smoking is a fine alternative. You will need a temperature probe for your bacon. ThermoWorks and Maverick both make quality probes.

Follow the directions for your smoker. It should take about four hours at 200 degrees to reach an internal temperature of 150. Don’t get the smoker too hot, or you will start to render out the fat, which is not at all what we want. With hot smoking, the bacon will be fully cooked when it’s done smoking. I most definitely recommend slicing a piece off the end when you bring it inside and stuffing it into your maw for one of the finest bites of porcine known to man.

Wood choice is up to you. I find a combination of hickory and cherry, or apple gives me the best results. And for those of you who don’t like smoked meats, or don’t have a smoker, bacon doesn’t have to be smoked at all if you so choose. Once you’ve let it dry in the fridge for a few days, slice it up.

Once the bacon is done, let it rest in the fridge uncovered  for up to a week to allow the smoke to penetrate.

On to processing. I cut the bacon into four squares and throw them into the freezer. You want the meat close to freezing for slicing. I cut them into pieces because I have a small slicer and it’s easier for packaging. I would recommend buying a slicer better than my cheap Cabela’s pos. I’ll be upgrading in the not too distant future. Cut the bacon to the thickness you like and then package it up. I do eight ounce packages.

From here, the rest is up to you. I actually don’t eat a lot of bacon as just bacon. More often than not, it’s an ingredient in another dish. As for cooking slices, the best method is on a rack in a 325 degree oven. The way I typically do it is to lay it in a cold skillet and turn the heat onto medium. I keep an eye on it and turn it frequently. Dry on paper towels and enjoy! In our next episode, we will explore making that delectable Italian style bacon known as Pancetta.

Thanks for looking.