Chapter 98 Smoked bacon, build high walls
The wind is sunny and the maximum temperature during the day is more than 20 degrees. The wild boar meat that Li Xiang had marinated before has been dried. However, it still lacks a little flavor and lacks the final process. It needs to be smoked with pine and cypress branches.
At this time, New Year's Day has passed and it has entered the beginning of the twelfth lunar month, so it is the right time to smoke bacon.
This is a traditional method of preserving meat in the South. Because in ancient times, there were no refrigerators, and the temperature in the south was high, meat could easily deteriorate, so it needed various methods such as air-drying and smoking to store it.
Some people in areas where there is no habit of eating bacon will be curious and ask, now almost every household has a refrigerator, is it not good to eat fresh pork? Why bother making bacon?
In fact, bacon, especially smoked bacon, is not only a means of long-term preservation of meat, but also a very rare delicacy. Its rich aroma and soft taste are not comparable to fresh pork.
Li Xiang built a simple smokehouse in the backyard, hung the bacon strips inside, piled pine branches underneath, lit it and started smoking.
Because these pine branches were cut down recently and are still green, even though they are rich in oil, they still cannot burn in the fire, so a lot of thick smoke is produced.
The pine tree itself has a unique aroma. After burning, smoking, and aromatic substances penetrate into it, the bacon will also produce a unique flavor.
It is also very good to use cypress branches, but there are more pine trees in the mountain behind Li Xiang's house, so what is chopped back are basically pine branches, and then mixed with a small amount of cypress branches and green hills.
Green tree, also called oak, is also a tree with a unique fragrance. It is commonly used in the West to make wine barrels. This kind of tree often grows some black fungus, which tastes better and is more nutritious than the black fungus grown on other trees. It is respected as a delicacy.
Different places have different production techniques, and other trees are also used, such as apple trees, pear trees, cherry trees, apricot trees, camphor trees, etc. They usually use local materials, whichever suitable tree is available in abundance. .
Grandma also helped, but after the fire started, the smoke was a bit heavy, so Li Xiang asked her to go out.
In fact, you don’t have to stay inside all the time. When the smoke is thick, you can close the door, go out and take a rest. When the pine branches are almost burned, you can come in to replenish the smoke. Or is it bacon, or people?
This process will take a long time, usually one or two days of smoking. The process of smoking is actually a process of sterilization and slow heating. When the smoking is completed, the bacon is basically cooked and only needs simple processing when eating.
Wild boar meat is relatively dry and hard after being air-dried. At this time, it is slowly smoked and heated with pine branches to soften the meat and improve its taste.
In fact, it might be better to use fat and lean pork belly, but now many people don’t like to eat fatty meat, and the fat in wild boar itself is relatively small.
As the New Year approaches, many people begin to make smoked meat and smoked sausages.
However, some places have recently issued some unkind announcements, saying that private smoking of cured products is prohibited, and smoked bacon, sausages, etc. must be sent to designated centralized smoking points. The official reason is to deal with air pollution.
Many people believe that this is done under the guise of environmental protection to promote certain companies’ meat products. For rural people, it is not good to smoke at home. If they are sent to a processing point for centralized smoking, they will have to pay an additional processing fee, which will increase the cost.
Fortunately, the county where Li Xiang's family is located has not issued such incomprehensible regulations, and he is working enthusiastically at home.
Air pollution? The end of the world is coming, who cares about air pollution?
After the smoked meat was ready, Li Xiang picked up one and smelled it. It was indeed very good. The fishy smell of wild boar meat basically disappeared, replaced by a unique and fragrant meat aroma.
He used a White Teeth dagger to cut off a thin slice, put it into his mouth, and tasted it carefully. The taste was very peculiar. In addition to the salty aroma of bacon, there were also complex aromas of grass, lemon, pepper, cinnamon, cloves, beans, fruits, etc. The flavor is, um, also slightly sweet.
The reason why it has a sweet taste is because a small amount of sugar is added during pickling.
As for other aromas, one is the flavor substances produced by the oxidative degradation of proteins and lipids and microbial fermentation, and the other is the special flavor imparted by phenols, furans and other compounds produced by the burning of cypress branches and green twigs during the smoking process.
Li Xiang prepared the smoked meat, recorded the video, and immediately sent out the pre-orders he had promised to fans through SF Express. As for the rest, I kept some at home and hung them on wooden shelves in the cellar, and then gave some to my grandparents and my sister-in-law. For dinner, I took a small strip of smoked meat and made a simple fried bacon dish with chili and garlic. The chili peppers were red, the garlic sprouts were green, and the bacon was brown and red, mixed with white garlic cloves and yellow ginger slices. When stir-frying, a little high-strength white wine was added, mixed with the aroma of sorghum shochu. After being plated and placed on the dining table, it was full of color, aroma and taste. Even grandma ate a small bowl of rice more than usual. .
The weather was sunny and there was not much farm work. Li Xiang's family finally started to build a wall.
It was not repaired before because there was no money, but now Li Xiang is not short of money.
So he personally designed the plan, hired a construction team, and asked the master to review it, then improved the plan and started construction immediately.
The courtyard wall winds around the previous backyard in a large circle, with a length of more than 300 meters, a height of 2.5 meters, and a thickness of 60 centimeters. It is not an exaggeration to call it a high-walled courtyard.
The rapeseed flowers planted before have been covered by heavy snow and nourished by snow water, and they are growing well.
Rapeseed itself is cold-resistant. Li Xiang took protective measures on his vegetable field before the heavy snowfall, so it did not freeze to death. On the contrary, after experiencing the wind and snow, the remaining rapeseed flowers became even more tenacious.
The high courtyard wall is built around the rapeseed flowers, enclosing them inside. Just waiting for the flowers to bloom in spring, it will be a beautiful scenery.
Then there is a back door and a side door left in the courtyard wall, and the back door can lead to the back mountain. The side door can lead to the front of the house. This door is relatively large. If anything is transported in the future, you can use this side door and drive the car directly into the backyard.
Then a dog hole was left for Erhuang to enter and exit easily. As for the kittens, they come and go so fast that such a small courtyard wall cannot stop them.
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The mother cat has already begun to teach the kittens how to climb over walls and to hunt. She leads the kittens to run around on the roof or in the trees every day.
Of course, washing one's face, licking fur, burying feces to hide one's own smell, etc. are also taught.
Li Xiang also specially took several videos of mother cats teaching their children and posted them online, which attracted many likes from fans.
One little mouse was particularly miserable. It was caught by the mother cat out of nowhere. Then it was used as a teaching prop and was tortured by five little mice in turn.
There are actually no mice in Li Xiang's house, and ordinary mice don't dare to come. It's probably the mother cat who caught them from an abandoned house far away during her "expedition".
There are many houses in the village that are unoccupied and have become a paradise for snakes, insects, rats, and ants.
In addition to the fence, Li Xiang also built a pigsty that could accommodate two or three pigs.
I don’t dare to raise too many pigs, not because I’m afraid of swine fever, but because I raise too many pigs. If I go out for something and don’t come home for a few days, it will be hard for grandma to feed so many pigs by herself and she will be too busy.
After all, grandma is old, so she can feed chickens and ducks just fine, just throw in a few handfuls of grains. Cats and dogs can also feed them, but they don’t eat much. The pigs are different. They can eat and make food. Just moving so much pig food is very hard.
The third wife's house was also built, and she reluctantly moved out from Li Xiang's house. It was not decorated much, so there was no need for ventilation to disperse formaldehyde. After living in Li Xiang's house for so long, the third wife was also very embarrassed and wanted to give money to Grandma Li Xiang. But Grandma Li Xiang didn't want it.
In fact, Li Xiang wouldn't mind if the third wife stayed in his own home.
(End of chapter)