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Salt pork

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Hawkmoon:
Having grown up in New England, I'm accustomed to baked beans with cubes of salt pork, rather than bits of bacon. The traditional "go to" brand of store bought baked beans in my family for decades was B&M brand. Sadly, B&M has been bought out by one of the congomerates, and their "Original" baked beans is now NOT the original. It now contains salt pork flavor (they say), but it no longer actually has any salt pork in it.

I'm a widower, so I don't feel like making a big pot of beans and salt pork from scratch. What I'd like to do is buy canned vegetarian baked beans and add some cubes of salt pork. I can buy a slab of salt pork at the supermarket, but I have no idea how to prepare it before adding it to the beans. I know I have to blanch it to remove as much of the salt as possible. Then what? I sort of tink I should just boil it for awhile, but for how long? A few minutes? A whole lotta minutes?

Advice welcome.

Fly320s:
I have never cooked with it, but I did find this info:  https://bostonsidewalks.com/View-a-Technique/2/5-Things-You-Need-to-Know-Before-Cooking-with-Salt-Pork

In general, it looks like you use it like bacon.

K Frame:
Exactly. You treat it just like bacon.

In fact, salt pork really IS bacon. It's cured largely the same way that bacon is. It does tend to be saltier than bacon, so you may or may not want to parboil it, depending on the dish you're going to use it iin.

In your case, adding it to prepared baked beans, I'd parboil it.

And you can certainly make your own, credible "faked beans" using canned beans and the other ingredients. Here's one of a TON of recipes I found online: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/21655/simple-baked-beans/

Andiron:
Funny thing,  salt pork smells like ass when you cook it,  but the flavor is amazing.  That Bostonsidewalks link has a pretty solid recipe for clam chowder that calls for salt pork.  I've made it like 3 times now and it's good.

Hawkmoon:

--- Quote from: Fly320s on December 02, 2017, 07:14:03 AM ---I have never cooked with it, but I did find this info:  https://bostonsidewalks.com/View-a-Technique/2/5-Things-You-Need-to-Know-Before-Cooking-with-Salt-Pork

In general, it looks like you use it like bacon.

--- End quote ---

I had already found that article. But in baked beans you don't treat the salt pork like bacon. When doing the beans the traditional (New England) way, the cubes (or strips, but I've always seen it in cubes) of salt pork are put in the pot with the beans and molasses and simmered for the entire cooking time -- which is several hours. The salt pork cubes in the finished product aren't browned or crispy, they're soft and tender, such that they can easily be cut with the edge of a fork.

But I'll be dealing with pre-cooked beans, so I need to get the salt pork to that same texture without re-cooking the whole thing and turning the beans into a soggy mass. Frying is out. I'm thinking of dicing the salt pork into cubes of maybe 1/2 inch or 3/8 inch size and then setting them in a saucepan to boil for awhile. The question is: how long should "awhile" be? Maybe I'll just have to experiment.

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