Bauchspeck Recipe

Here's our Mangalitsa speck recipe. It is the same for bellies or jowls:

100# de-ribbed & beveled Mangalitsa bellies
2.5 lbs salt + 4oz Sure Cure (6.25%nitrite)
12 oz brown sugar
4 oz #14 Black Pepper
4 oz Ground Corriander
4 oz Ground Ginger
2 oz Granulated Garlic
2 oz Crushed Juniper berries

1. Rub both sides of each belly, stack in vat meat to meat, skin to skin for 3 to 4 weeks (10 days if bellies are previously frozen).

2. Brush off excess cure mixture.

3. Hang on smoke racks and cold smoke for 6 hours. We use applewood.

4. Let hang to dry age.


As I mentioned before, the details of the speck process don't really matter. I really might as well have said (as I explained in previous posts):

1. Make a cold-smoked, dry-cured bacon, with pepper, ginger, coriander, garlic and juniper.

2. Dry it until it is shelf-stable.

The key to this is using the bellies of old Mangalitsa pigs that have eaten the right feed. Unless you get that right, your speck will be mediocre, because your meat will be relatively flavorless, and your fat will be heavy and probably rancid.

That's why so many of the best restaurants in the USA buy our stuff; we optimize the variables that matter, consistently producing the best.

Why give away the recipe? There's two reasons:

1. We sell the bellies. Giving away the recipe helps to sell the bellies.

2. It hammers home the fact that the quality of the raw material is so important.