A couple Februaries ago I harvested my first, and to date only, wild boar. My primary motivation was a desire to put organic meat in the freezer and create recipes. And while the smaller good-eating wild hogs typically do not produce American-style “streaky” bacon due to anatomy and the absence of belly fat, I was able to craft a beautiful Irish-Style bacon using the eye of the loin and a wet “Wiltshire-style” cure.
Making home-crafted, or artisanal small batch back-bacon and other wild charcuterie is easy and the results are mouthwatering. It’s a matter of three very simple steps. Two, if you elect non-smoked meat.
Loosely, the Wiltshire-style is a wet-cure developed in England in the 18th century. Prior to the Wiltshire method, a slaughtered animal would be hung in a damp basement and then dry-cured with lots of salt to preserve it over the winter. Health regulations outlawed that practice around 1870. It was about that time the Harris family in Wiltshire County, England, discovered that you could use much less salt if the meat was kept wet and chilled.
What is Irish bacon? Essentially, it is the same as Canadian, or British style bacon. Geography tends to dictate what you call it, and there are slight variations as to what part of the middle-meat you actually use, but all of the three come from the back, and specifically a part of the loin. (Also known as the backstrap.) All are considered back bacon.
Here are the steps to make Wild Boar Irish Bacon:
Step One
Start with a trimmed eye of the loin and submerge in a wet-cure. (Recipe Here.) Store covered in the refrigerator for at least 48 hours and up to 4 days.
Step Two
Pull the loin out of the brine and set on a drying rack. Set the drying rack on a cookie sheet and put it back in the fridge. Do not cover. You want to air dry the loin for 2-3 days to allow the sugar and salt to make a nice thin crust. Make sure to rotate a few times so even the rack marks get a chance to dry. This thin dry skin layer, known as the pellicle, will coax a smoky crust of deliciousness once the loin is put into the smoker. If you don’t want to smoke your Irish bacon you can stop right here. Slice it thin, fry it up in pan, and dream about your next hog hunt. But, if you like it smoked keep reading.
Step Three
Fire-up your smoker, and put in your loin. For wood, this recipe used hickory, but you can use pecan, apple-wood, alder, whatever you prefer. Depending on the size of your wild loin smoke for 2-3 hours, or maybe more if you have a beast. My loin only took a couple hours because it was small.
Once the bacon is out of the smoker and has a chance to cool a bit, drizzle it lightly with Courvoisier, bourbon, or whatever you want. Historically, a fortified wine, or Irish whiskey would have been used as an antiseptic to preserve the meat for eating at a later time. In this case, we sliced up the warm loin, and drizzled more Courvoisier on the rashers because it tasted so good. (Typically, rashers should be lightly drizzled, not doused, as it would over power the flavor of the cure and the smoke. You can easily omit the alcohol if you wish.)
All there is to do now is load up a moist and tender slice of warm bread with a hunk of sweet creamery butter, rustic artisanal mustard, a smoky and savory rasher of crusty drunken Irish bacon goodness, top it with the tang of a dill, and revel in a bite of unsurpassed wild hog heavenliness. I kid you not! This was worth every mile driven, and every day hunted. But be warned, once you set this out for your guests it will disappear faster than a hog running for the mesquite underbrush.
