Slab Bacon

[Abrams]

Re: Slab Bacon

http://www.lobels.com/store/main/item.asp?item=300 Looks like a decent online source for double smoked bacon slabs. 2.5 pound slabs on sale for about $29 plus shipping. Call it 11-12 bucks a pound, so it ain't cheap. But that is "double smoked" which normally does run a little more.

My local butcher shop does not normally stock it, but can get it for me, for about $8-9 a pound. So you might ask your local butcher if they can get it.

It looks like Mr. Heath's source has the best prices.

[Cottoncarder]

Re: Slab Bacon

Dunno how prevalent they are out your way, but we have a large Asian community out here with markets that cater specifically to them. I frequently waltz right on in there due to the fact that I love Korean food and the fact their produce beats anything available in the usual super market chains. If you keep your eye peeled, you can always find some real goodies at great prices. For example just last week, I found slab belly bacon at $3.99 per lb. Nice and lean too. With my eye on future events, I picked up a good mess of it and stuck it in the freezer. See if you have one in your area and check it out.

[Edwin Carl Erwin]

slab bacon

Kenton,

For quality smoked bacon: New Braunfels Smokehouse | Hickory-Smoked Meats Since 1945 www.nbsmokehouse.com/, on the left of the home page click "Pork Items", scroll down to & click on "Smoked Comal County Slab Bacon". This is probably the best smoked slab bacon you'll ever have.

Bear in mind all food prices have & are continuing to drastically go up. Select a quality, authentic bacon then work your budget to make payment.

Hope this is helpful.

Regards,

[Charles Heath]

Re: Slab Bacon

That's alot of ham-baconie goodness when handed to a starving ol boy been living in the dirt at the End Game. 3rd Quarter 64 who you rushing these provisions to ? Contemplation of historical pork hypotheticals is a sickness.

Chris,

Less the 10% for waste in transit and storage (a standard rate used by both governments), coupled with the CS 1/3 pound per day rate, that is enough bacon for 40,000 men for approximately one month. When the rebs go to 1/4 pound per day, that supply stretches an additional 10 days. Ever cube out 1/3 and 1/4 pound of bacon just for educational purposes? It's not much, and the grease leftover from that amount isn't enough to work with the corn meal ration, either.

Given the 9-10 May 1864 great bacon fire at Beaver Dam, Virginia, courtesy of Phil Sheridan's adventures during the hard fighting at Spotsylvania, that estimated 200,00o-250,000 pounds of bacon destroyed at that location sorely needed to be replaced. The assumption the 450,000 pounds you cite, and the vittles lost at Beaverdam are a stretch, but this does indicate the fairly large amounts involved when compared to the few hundred pounds needed for events here and there, and the (typically) generous portions.

Having dealt with rancid bacon suffering from the summer heat, and having been issued some from time to time, providing reenactors with Nassau Bacon, or a reasonable facsimile, you'd best make sure the average living historian has something else to eat. Not many tote a period meat saw in their back pocket, and fewer yet would be willing to ingest that amber and brown streaked meat with "a bit of a twang to it." Trust me when I say the wholesome goodness of smoked pig tails and hocks provided a genuine Vat der Fritz moment for the CS troops at Glendale-Malvern back in April. Let's just say they appreciated the rest of their meat rations when found later in the day.

Canned meat was out there for the confederates. Figuring out where and when it was appropriate is another task. We get a glimpse of this from time to time, but it isn't enough...just tantalizing.

Johnny,

... IMHO, I would feel this would be true even 140+ years ago.

That would be back bacon, which is darned good. Ever hear the phrase "living high on the hog?"

At the depot level, the federals listed under the major meat grouping "bacon" three types:

- Side Bacon

- Shoulders

- Ham

This is consistent in report after report after report. If the shoulders and hams are cured the same as the side bacon, that means no pepper and no sugar. The letters from Louisville (previously mentioned) suggest sugar cured hams were readily available on the civilian market, but were not mil-spec. Whether or not the federals adopted sugar cured hams remains to be seen, but the claims of a significant price saving was attractive, and these fellows were really crunching out the numbers to achieve per ration costs from 17 3/10 up to 19 7/10 cents. Not saying the numbers were higher or lower, but that's the range I've seen and it is consistent with the "about 20 cents" figure we read about. Some of the training camp commissaries were complaining about having to pay upwards of 24 cents per ration by having to local purchase food items. Those clerks were doing a heck of a lot of long division by hand, and, yes, they had auditors back then.

Did the confederates treat their higher level ration paperwork the same was as was done in "the old army?" That is a good assumption, but still an assumption. What I find interesting as heck is the federals really and truly didn't start standardizing their reports and procedures (even though they had subsistence regulations -- lots of letters from the field requesting copies, too) until mid-to-late 1863.

Some back bacon would be good for a change. It's not cheap, but it is still available on this side of the Atlantic.

This portion of Scott McKay's 10th Texas Infantry website has been posted a coupla zillion times, but there is always someone who has never seen it, and will likely benefit from it:

http://members.aol.com/cbbelt/Food/

While not related to bacon, this, also from Scott's site, is pure fun:

http://members.aol.com/cbbelt/Food/shucks.htm

It's unfortunate the utensils section washed away during one of several AOL burps. I'm not sure if this is helping David tell the difference between bacon and salt pork, but it is fun rehashing (no pun intended) this info, and adding in some new bits.

[damnyankee14th]

Re: Slab Bacon

I just put my order in at a local meat market for double smoked slab bacon (pork belly) @ $3.99 a lb

I will have him slice it into 1/2 ins strips and wrapped in nice butcher paper with string.

I will then freeze it until I leave in 2 weeks

[Virginia Mescher]

Re: Slab Bacon

Virginia Mescher's article about salt pork is worth reading. It may or may not be in the Veranda, but it was one of those "WOW!" articles that would hit the Watchdog every once in a great while.

The salt pork article isn't in the Veranda yet but is on the list for putting up there. Stay tuned for the posting. There is at least one in line before it.

I'm glad you liked the article and it was fun to write. I'm always a fan of pork and it's a shame that the good stuff is so difficult to find, especially when you live in a metropolitan area. Growing up in southern rural VA, I was used to home grown vegetables, fresh butter, buttermilk, and eggs, fresh chickens killed at home, home-cured ham, decent fatback, great home-made souse, and all sorts of home-canned goodies. Now things just don't taste the same and some of my recipes don't work out because the base ingredients are different.

[VMI88]

Re: Slab Bacon

I just paid $5/lb. for a mess of dry-cured bacon at the new Smithfield Ham store in Williamsburg. For those who live in Virginia, it's across from the The Peanut Shoppe in Merchants' Square in the historic district.

[27thNCdrummer]

Re: Slab Bacon

Paul Boulden,
I would love to see your reference to pickled beef. I remember reading in Lee's Miserables that some troops in the ANV were issued pickled beef. I remember one soldier say something like, "it could be dog, but I like it anyway".

I would like to get my hands on recipe and see if I can try to prepare and can some pickled beef.

[OldKingCrow]

Re: Slab Bacon

Pickled beef was fed to prisioners of the CS at some point so I deduct it was more familiar than not.

A Yankee Sketch of Point Lookout. New York Hearld - May 1864

Now and what the prisoners eat.

There are halt a dozen cook houses, plain board buildings, each with its long outing room, with four or five table down its length, and a smaller back room or kitchen. Each house can feed about five hundred at a time. The menial work in them performed by volunteer details from camp, and a "position," at it is called, is estectued so highly that nomination for a vacancy caslly commands from five to ten dollars. A rebel sergeant superintends each house. The table furniture is extremely primitive — tin cups and plates. There are two meals per day. For breakfast each prisoner has a tin cup of coffee, with the addition of a spoonful of molasses once, or sometimes twice, a week, and for dinner a piece of meat, either port, pickled beef, or fresh beef, the size of the piece varying from a quarter to three quarters of a pound weight, and either coffee — same in quantity as for breakfast — potato soup, carrot soup, or bean soup, when either of the latter, a pint to the man. When meat and codes are provided a few Irish potatoes are added. Of course, bread in part of the rations; but it is issued to the company be giants, who deal it out a loaf to each man. The loaves weigh nine or ten ounces. Sometimes crackers are issued instead of soft bread--nine a day per man. The cooks and all cook house servants are allowed three meal a day, and are not reserved as to quantity. This accounts for the fact that "positions" have a money value.

[Charles Heath]

Re: Slab Bacon

Aw, c'mon, enough of this pedestrian stuff, how about 10,500 pounds of beef tongue (also listed as ox tongue)? Now, I really miss Irene Henion's contributions to events. Her crocks of pickled beef tongue is to die for.

Bob Firth mentioned on the OTB Forum that he wanted to experiment with beef this summer, and once I get these new barrels salted in, I may be up for a couple hundred pounds for an event later in the year that doesn't even know it is likely to get rations. Seems I remember Chef Gouge and a certain infamous beef stew at Shiloh...we called it by a more appropriate accoutrement name.

[ephraim_zook]

Re: Slab Bacon

Ladies & Gents,

Last year I paid $2.00 / lb for slab bacon for the McDowell event, but I got it directly from a farmer who processes his own meat, and I got good pricing because I bought 225 lbs. This year, I'm getting double-smoked bacon from a local butcher, but I only need around 20 lbs for AHT. It's costing me $4.69 per lb. I can deal with that.

Ron Myzie
in Northeast PA

[Jerry Ross]

Re: Slab Bacon

Hello all,
I cure bacon, ham and sausage every fall in our Family's 150 year old smoke house .I have been doing this since I was 10 years old , helping my Father .To make the bacon place the slab in salt for about 2 days on each side and then smoke them for about 7-10days .The hams on the other hand take longer .To be a true country ham, the ham is placed in salt for 30 days and smoked for about 2 weeks and allowed to hang for almost a year . The ham can be eaten before that though. The meat does lose moisture the longer it hangs . I typically take the sausage down after intially smoking and place in freezer to keep quality and taste ,I likewise do the same with the bacon . The main reason I do this because most people will not eat it if it is allowed to dry out too much .

I think the difference between salt pork and bacon other than maybe cuts of meat is that salt pork is not smoked .

I normally sell Sausage, Bacon, Ham after the the 1st of December beacuse that is when it is cool enough to smoke the meat in the smoke house . Smoked sauage cost about $8 for 2lb sack ,Bacon $5 lb Ham $6 lb xhow much the whole ham weighs.

Charles, I believe you cooked some of the sausage at Fort Donelson several years ago.

[Charles Heath]

Re: Slab Bacon

Charles, I believe you cooked some of the sausage at Fort Donelson several years ago.

Jerry,

I remember that bulk sausage well, but most everyone else remembers the "Mule Feed" served Saturday morning, for some reason.

Colbi Rosenthal actually cooked the venison sausage, after we'd both spent most of Friday evening and part of the wee hours of Saturday morning in a 33 degree F. downpour defrosting said sausage as hard as solid shot. It was a night to be remembered, and Colbi's talma was a lifesaver. I have some very fond memories of that event from ration documentation to stolen pies to snow to Kiev-the-pukin' Vinegar Man to the Land Between the Lakes Yeti (Woodburn in his Buffalo Robe). It is a darn shame so many of the AARs washed away during various fora crashes, and more importantly, some of the collected and highly educational research information was also lost. At least the latter can be rebuilt.

I was so glad you fellows set up a wall tent for the cookhouse at that event. It was a roomy luxury we rarely get the chance to enjoy. That event had some of the best firewood I'd ever used for cooking. Fort Donelson 2006 was also a good road trip with Brother Yoder, and that event set up the lonely domestic duck of Riner, Va., heading to Winter 1864 2006, as a modest gag in the officers quarters. Event synergy, who'd a thunk it?

Good times.

[ohioyankee]

Re: Slab Bacon

I just got my slab bacon in time for Gettysburg. I paid $3.65 a pound at a local meat shop in Mantua. Thanks for all the information everyone.

[Iron Brigade Ed]

Re: Slab Bacon

[QUOTE=OldKingCrow;110211]The traditional English "fry up". Put a cardiologist on speed dial.

Oh come now chaps . .you LOVE it really! hahaha. Nothing like a proper breakfast to get you going in the morning . . and ease the excesses of the night before . .and if you want a healthier option just add a fried tomato! :D

Following this thread we are indeed 'separated by a common language' . .certainly in terms of food!

Must go and get some lunch now, this is making me hungry!