On Techniques

Making pancetta, learning old skills, having fun

In his lovely piece, “How to Make Pancetta,”

Will Cooper

writes that it is “important [for him] be able to make the ingredients that [he relies] upon, products that [he] usually depend[s] on others to make… [products] that it’s easy to take for granted, and ones that keep the old skills alive.”¹

That sentiment resonated with me the first time I read it and it still resonates with me now. As someone who strives to cook hard things, the concepts of curing my own meats, making my own cheeses, fermenting my own vinegars are both challenges and opportunities. How can I make myself more self-reliant? How can I become more connected to the ingredients that I use? I can I become more aware of what it takes to put meat on the literal and proverbial table? These are all questions that are fundamental to the idea of radical eating — and, thus, fundamental to me.

So I’ve chipped away at these techniques, curing and smoking hams, pickling vegetables, fermenting kombucha and kefir, making cheese and reducing berries to jam. Many of these processes are useful — the end product a far superior version of that which I could buy in the store — but some of them turn out to be busts. They take too long, they’re prohibitively expensive, the line between bliss and botulism too fine to chance.

As a result, there are few things I won’t try to make on my own at least once — and plenty that I am content to have simply crossed off my list. Some of you, I understand, may be so inclined to feel the same way when in the kitchen. You, too, might enjoy cooking hard things, broadening your skillsets, flexing your muscles. So, to aid in those endeavors is an entirely incomplete list of techniques and preparations I’ve tried to make, and whether or not I’d make them again.

Use this however you’d like — and, if you do find yourself experimenting, I’d love to hear how it goes.

We’ll start with a simple one: Homemade bread. Ever since Uncle Steady gifted us a mason jar full of his lovingly nurtured starter, we’ve been baking bi-weekly loaves which far outshine anything we could buy at the grocery store². The effort involved happens mostly the night before and can be accomplished in fifteen minutes. We bake two loaves and slice and freeze them, giving us on-demand fresh bread when needed. Given how quickly after buying it, good bread goes stale, and how slowly bad bread does, the effort to make our own is well-worth it.

Cottage cheese is another staple in our house. We go through copious amounts each week. Thinking I’d be clever and try to make some on my own, saving costs and possibly making something delicious, I bought some rennet and sacrificed a gallon of milk for the cause. While a fun experiment, I didn’t nail the texture nor the taste. For this indulgence, we’ll be sticking with GOOD³.

For awhile I was on a kombucha kick, drinking a glass or two almost daily. Loathing spending $5 a bottle, I figured I’d try to make my own. The process is shockingly simple and I quite enjoyed the end result — but, ultimately, I didn’t drink enough kombucha over the long-term to make managing my SCOBY worth it. Kefir, on the other hand, another fermented drink I enjoy, is only slightly more difficult to make at home, and used far more frequently. I drink it, cook with it, bake with it, and sometimes, when I’m feeling down, even put a little in my hair⁴. Plus, it’s a great way to preserve any milk that’s getting close to turning.

We eat a lot of pasta in our household. Having been gifted a pasta maker from Grammy CWD, it goes without saying we’ll often make our own. The kids love helping⁵ and it’s a nice family activity. However, on a day-to-day basis, when we’re just throwing it in a red sauce, it’s much easier to just buy quality dried pasta. We’ll save the homemade version for when we’re making something extravagant — like mushroom pasta with bolognaise.

I got the idea to cure and smoke an Easter ham a few years ago and now it’s the only way the Family CWD will eat it. Ham is something we have infrequently enough where the idea of curing an entire leg for two weeks and then smoking it for eight to ten hours is worth it. We plan ahead. I’ve tried to do the same with bacon, though, and just can’t get my flavor profile as good as what we buy from Short Creek Farm. Maybe one day.

I’ve written before about how fulfilling I find processing my own game. Recently, I’ve been buying the lambs from my lamb lady whole and then breaking them down myself. This, as

Sam Sager

pointed out, is primarily for the repetitions — which I think was his way to politely tell me that my butchery is sloppy. It is far cleaner and faster to buy the component parts from the store. But in doing so, you lose out on a lot of fun and a critical connection to your food.⁶

Some fast ones: I’d put my homemade pickles toe-to-toe with anything Vlasic makes any day of the week. Same goes for homemade pancakes and waffles — just as easy and far tastier than throwing Eggos in the toaster. I wouldn’t say the same for my attempts to make fruit gummies for the kiddos, nor for our efforts to make a better barbeque sauce⁷. We do save the majority of our bacon fat for cooking — that’s worth it for the brussels sprouts, alone — and if you’re going through the effort to buy an entire cow, you might as well take the time to render down the tallow, too.

One might say it’s cheating, since I don’t actually make it, but I think Uncle Steady’s hand-roasted coffee is better than what you’d get at even the fanciest coffee shop.

I tried once to make soba noodles from scratch, but, while edible, wouldn’t quite say they were successful (nor do we eat them frequently enough for it to matter). We haven’t, however, bought any type of stock from the store in years. We do go through enough peanut butter to fill a swimming pool, but between buying and grinding the nuts and then cleaning the blender, I’m not quite sure that it’s worth it. Homemade lemonade, on the other hand, is well worth the squeeze.

At the end of the day, you need to find what works best for you and your family. If you’ve found something at the store that you absolutely love, certainly try to replicate it. But, if your efforts yield an inferior product, it’s okay to chock it up as a learning experience. You’ve added a new tool to your toolbox, made yourself a little more self-reliant.

And, after all, this is really just meant to be fun.

This piece was originally published in the November issue of

WARKITCHEN

and has been slightly updated here. As always, a big thanks to

ROCKY

for publishing it — and it’s well-worth reading in the magazine just to see how beautifully it was laid out.

1. One of the most referenced cookbooks in the CWD Kitchen is Darina Allen’s Forgotten Skills of Cooking which is a phenomenal resource for those old skills.

2. His recipe can be found here, for those curious:

3. Which is the best.

4. What do you think holds it up, slick?

5. Really, just eating the dough.

6. Nor do you get to really appreciate how many sheep it takes to have lamb chops when Nana CWD is cooking!

7. Rufus Teague being just fine.