This post will be a little shorter than most, but discusses the curing of agave bacon and a seasoned rub of meat to be smoked/barbecued. These things did not take up a lot of class time, in fact the bacon was a quick demo right before the soup event. Nonetheless, they are cool to see and important to know.
First, the bacon. Curing of bacon or any meat basically just involves a lot of salt. Salt salt salt. In fact, I have a cool picture that shows you just how much salt:
I know. This bowl is a basic mixture of salt and agave syrup, and probably a few other things that I missed but you get the general idea. If you want to know the specifics shoot me an email under the about page and I will get back to you. The bacon is cured by a dry method, which means the mixture will be put directly onto the meat and it will be left to "get happy" as my dad calls it.
Here is the finished product. This of course takes time, the bacon was left to hang for later cooking/use. Curing is a process used for food preservation, particularly with meats. The purpose of this was to show you the very basics, like I said if you want more specifics let me know.
Second is a method of seasoning called a rub. My dad makes these a lot of barbecue it is essentially just a mix of spices that get lathered into a slab of meet (in this case I believe pork shoulder) that is then left to once again "get happy" until it is put into the smoker.
The right image is the finished product. This post is not very detailed as these are methods that we did not spend a lot of time on, but they are important in meat preparation so they are good to discuss.