Making Pancetta is so easy – Traditional Italian way, from scratch

Pancetta is so easy to make right at home – really! This is our traditional family way to make pancetta from scratch. As we know, pancetta makes a fantastic addition to any sauce. It’s also great on pizzas and let’s not forget how great it is when fried with eggs. Besides, homemade is always best.

00:00 Intro
01:03 Salting the pork
03:31 16 hours later, curing the pancetta
06:54 Hanging the pancetta
08:30 5 weeks later, squeeze test
10:09 First look
10:36 Taste test
12:26 Vacuum seal
12:45 Outro

Making Pancetta from scratch – old fashioned way
Prep Time: 10 minutes + 16 hr. rest
Cure Time: 5 – 6 weeks
Makes: 3 lbs.

Ingredients
• 1 cup (290 grams) (10 oz) fine table salt or fine sea salt
• 1 pork belly, 3 lbs. (1.36 kg)
• Spices: Paprika, hot chili flakes, black pepper – use 1, 2 or all 3 spices, to taste

Process
• Put pork belly in a container and completely cover it in salt, all around. Place in fridge for 16 hours (15 hour minimum – 16 hours ideal, no longer)
• Remove from fridge and wash off all the salt. Pat the belly dry with paper towel
• Sprinkle spices all around the pork belly.
• Poke a small hole in one of the corners, leaving about 2 inches (5 cm) from the edge
• Run a string through the hole, enough to hang the pork belly, and then hang it in your cantina (cold room – fruit cellar) or in your fridge. Just make sure it hangs freely with nothing touching it. (optimal temperature range is 34 deg. F to 40 Deg. F) (1 C to 4 C) (optimal humidity range is 65 – 75%)
• Let hang anywhere from 5 – 6 weeks – when cured, it should be firm once you squeeze it
• With a brush, you can now remove any excess spices by brushing them off
• You can now slice and enjoy fresh or use for cooking. A good practice is to cut the pancetta into smaller sizes and then vacuum seal them (i.e. with a food saver type vacuum) for later use. Once vacuum sealed, they will last up to 2 years, best if stored in the fridge.
NOTE: The skin on the

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Hello, everyone. My name is Ivo and welcome to Cooking with the Coias. You know, I have been fortunate enough to grow up in an Italian household. Both my parents were born and raised in Abruzzo, Italy, and in fact, my older brother was born in Italy as well. And then, like many others, they immigrated into Canada during the 50s. And with them, they brought all their traditions. And I grew up with these traditions. And today, folks, I want to share one of those traditions with you, because, after all, we want to keep those traditions going. Okay. So today I’m going to show you how we make power and chatter or in North America and chatter. But it’s fun chatter and it’s so easy to make. After this video, you’re going to say to yourself, my goodness, I didn’t realize it was that easy to make. I can do it. And yes, you can. And yes, it’s easy. Let me show you how we did it. So it starts off with a pork belly. And the last time, I mean, chatter, I ended up using almost the whole pork belly. Fortunately, they sell them now in pieces. So I have here a 3 pound piece of pork belly. And that’s that’s a nice size to make for pancetta and has the skin on the back and that’s perfectly fine. So I have here is some regular household table salt. Okay. So again, now some people might say, I use curing salts and I’m just sharing with you how we do it in our family. And I can tell you this, our pinch hitter has always turned out absolutely amazing. And we have never, ever, ever lost a punch. They go bad on us. It’s always been good. So please keep that in mind. There are other ways of of doing this. This is our way. Okay. So let’s take some salt. And you want to heavily salt this pork belly and you want to heavily salt it all around. Okay, so I have it in this held in this container and happens to be stainless, but you can use a plastic in a whole whatever, whatever container you have that’s going to hold your pork belly and all the stuff. So put it all around. And now someone asks, So how much salt do you use? Do you use a lot? So the reason I actually poured it in this one cup container is so that this time I’m actually measuring how much I’m going to use in one cup. You know what? Four, 3 pounds. That’s enough. So take the salt. Make sure it’s sitting on the salt. That’s it. Step one is done, folks. Step one is so easy and the next steps are just as easy. So all we have to do now is let this sit for 16 hours. That’s the key. Not longer, Not less. Well, you can go maybe as less as 15. But 16 is the key number. And at that point, we’re going to take it out of the salt and I’ll show you how. So let’s let this sit for 16 hours in a refrigerator or in my case, it’s going to go in my container, which is also known as a cold room or referred to as a fruit seller. It’s nice and cold in there. It’s going to sit there for 16 hours. And we’ll be right back at you. So our 16 hours are now up and our pork belly has been sitting patiently in that salt, just sitting and waiting. And that now needs to be rinsed off. We need to get all that salt rinsed off. And I want you to notice here, there’s a little bit of liquid in this pan, and that’s normal. There you go. So that’s why you need to put it in some sort of container that’s kind of leakproof. Okay. So with some cold water, very simply, we just want to rinse off all that salt because that salt has done its job. We don’t need any more salt. And in fact, that’s 16 hours, folks. Just a comment on that. That’s really, really key, because what happens is that’s enough time to help cure our pancetta, number one. And number two, it doesn’t make it overly salty. Sometimes if you let it sit in the salt for two too long, all you taste is salt when you cut into your pancetta. So that’s nice and clean. All the salt is removed. So give me a minute. I’m going to clean this tray right now. All right. And once you’ve got it, pat dry. Now, folks, it’s time to spice it. So paprika, chili pepper, black pepper. You could use all of them, or you could use one of them. If you don’t want it hot, don’t add the Chili Peppers. But I’m going to make this slightly hot. I’m going to add a little bit of chili. Just a bit. Okay. Just a bit of chili. I’m not going to add black pepper because I’ve been avoiding it lately, but I am going to use lots of paprika. Don’t be shy with the paprika. This is not smoky paprika. It’s just your regular sweet. You could use Spanish or Hungarian paprika. I mean, if you like the smoked flavor, by all means, use the smoked. But you can see I’m putting a good layer of paprika on because you want the spice on the outside. It’s going to it’s going to flavor and it’s also going to help cure. So those two things. And there we go. That looks pretty good. Me a little more here. Okay. How easy was that? All right. And now this, folks is ready to be hung up. Almost. We got to put a hole in it, so I’m going to take a knife and it’s going to poke a hole right through here. Okay. And then let’s take a string. You could use a string. You could put a hook through there. Whatever. Whatever you want to use to hang with. I’m just going to use a string if I can talk it through. Most. Okay. I’m just going to use a string. Right. This now, folks, is ready to be hung. So I see. I removed a little bit of fabric there. Okay. Let’s go hang up our pancetta. So here I am in my cantina. And let’s take our our pancetta, which is going to be pancetta. You take a closer look at it there. See how it’s all covered nicely with the with the paprika. And I did use a little bit a little bit of, as you saw there, chili peppers. Okay. So all we do now is we’re just going to hang that up. There we go. That’s about as hard as it gets, folks, right there. Now, a couple of things. If you don’t have a container, you can still make pancetta. You can use your refrigerator. Do exactly what we did now. Hang it up in your refrigerator. Just make sure that there’s nothing touching it. It has to be free all the way around, all the time so that you have the airflow oc the ideal temperature in your container right now, -40 degrees, ideally 34 to 39. That’s the ideal range. Humidity ideally between 65 and 75% with 70 B in prime. If it’s too low humidity, if you’ve got 30, 40% humidity, very dry, what happens is the outside gets dried and the inside doesn’t get a chance to dry. So humidity is very important. If it’s too humid, you’re going to create a lot of mold. So aim for that 65 to 75%. Keep it in that 34 to 40 degree Fahrenheit temperature range and that’s it. We just leave it now. Let it hang and let it cure. Here we are, January 19th. It’s been five weeks. And honestly, folks, after four weeks, it was ready. But the thing is, with our pancetta, you want to do what I call the squeeze test? Squeeze it here. It’s firm. In fact, it’s very firm. And in here it’s firm with just a little bit of resistance or a little bit of softness. I could feel just a slight bit. But here it’s like solid. And the reason is because they’re pancetta. If you look here, it’s much thicker here and it’s much thinner down here. So what happened? Is this part dried and was ready after four weeks, this kind of needed one more week. But basically it doesn’t matter because even if it’s hard and firm, it’s still perfectly fine. So let’s go take this now, slice into it and do the taste test. Let’s take a closer look at our beautiful pancetta, you know, in dialect. My and my mother would call this vente Alaska. That’s an average sage dialect. But there we go. Beautiful. Beautiful. Now, what I want to do is I used a lot of paprika, as you know, and I’m just going to brush off some of that excess. So I like to have it for the flavor, of course, and I like to have it on there while the French is curing. So now I don’t have to remove all of it, but I just remove the excess. So with the brush, just kind of simply remove the excess. Okay. And there we go. Nice and clean. Now, we don’t use any water because we don’t want to get it wet. Let’s cut into this right now and do the taste test. We can remove our string now. Okay. And I’m going to cut this right in half so you can get a really good look at this and chatter. Let’s give a good slice right through the middle. Wow. Take a look, folks. Take a look at that beautiful, beautiful home. Cured pancetta right there. Now we’re going to do the taste test. Always my favorite part, the taste test. Okay, let’s slice this up. Here’s a nice one right here. Let’s just take a nice. Right down to the. Isn’t not nice. I think that’s nice and thin. Beautiful. Now, if you find the outside to be a bit hard, you can just trim that little bit off. Right. Just like that. Absolutely amazing. Just the right amount of saltiness that salt cure that amount of time on under salt is key. That’s absolutely delicious. Now, I also want to show you. See the amount of fat there on the on the outside? Well, first of all, that’s fantastic for cooking. You want to make your sausage and soups, whatever you want to add that pancetta to it really elevate your dish to the next level. But if you’re going to eat it like I just did, you could easily just remove a little bit of that fat and enjoy it nice and fresh just the way it is. Folks, you saw how easy that was to make. You also saw how quick that was to make. Four weeks. Five weeks. You have fresh, homemade pancetta. Can’t beat that, folks. You really can’t. You’ve got to give it a try. And now what I’m going to do, I’m going to vacuum seal this. And that’s how I store my. And I just vacuum pack it. I leave it in the fridge or in the container. It can stay on the shelf. It’s good for one two years. Once it’s vacuum sealed, you’re good to go. And I like to vacuum the smaller pieces. That way I take out what I need when they need it. Hope you give this Italian tradition a try. I want to thank you for spending time with me on today’s episode of Cooking with the Coias. And as always, folks, until next time, buying a potato and enjoy some Italian tradition. Absolutely beautiful.