23 Jul 2014

PALEO CANDY CHOCOLATE BACON BARS

CACAO IS A SUPER FOOD YOU SHOULD EAT
You gotta try theses, I love love love these, the sweet salty crispy sweet cure bacon and the rich dark slightly bitter chocolate are a match made in heaven, what a fabulous sweet treat that is still paleo.  This is a great go to and helps successfully manage any cravings you may get as it is packed full of flavour and the 70% cacao gives you a burst of rich chocolate with a hint of sweetness without being loaded with refined sugar.


My geeky science bit...
Cacao 70%+ chocolate has more antioxidant activity, polyphenols, flavonoids, than any other fruit tested, more than blueberries and acacia berries!  100g of dark honest chocolate a day can be a great health benefit booster, loaded with calcium, potassium, a protein, phosphorus, zinc, selenium, 11g of soluble fibre, loaded with minerals, dark chocolate can improve health and lower your risk of heart disease, 67% RDA, of iron, 58% RDA magnesium, 89% copper and 98% manganese.  The fatty acids in cacao are excellent too.  Free radicals are bad for us and eating antioxidants like cacao are very important in removing theses free radicals from our bodies, cacao scored one of the highest levels of antioxidants on the (ORAB) oxygen radical absorption balance scale.

INGREDIENTS
12 rashers streaky bacon
150g 70% chocolate melted

Simple assembly process, oven bake your bacon with a second baking tin on top to keep the rashers flat, leave to cool, in a double boiler gently melt the chocolate, if you want a glossy shine add a teaspoon of butter to the chocolate, then just dip you bacon rasher into your melted chocolate and leave to cool.

THE GOOD AND THE BAD NEWS ABOUT BACON

THE BAD FIRST
Commercial reared pigs are kept in crowded conditions, risk of infection is high therefore the pigs are routinely dosed with antibiotics and growth promoting antibiotics which artificially speed up muscle growth.  The commercially produced bacon is tumbled with chemical water to add weight and then is loaded with the chemicals nitrates, nitrites and sodium triphosphate for preserving the meat, making it easier to cut and lowering spitting during cooking.  If bacon is eaten in excess it will lead to bowel cancer, heart disease and raised blood pressure.  Bacon is high in saturated fat, one slice has 30mg of cholesterol and is high in sodium.

THE GOOD NEWS
It is super easy to dry-cure your own streaky bacon at home in your fridge (recipe below), ensuring chemically preservative free bacon, your bacon will not be as pink because it is the chemical salt petre (pink salt) that preserves bacon and gives it the pink colour.  Bacon is a protein and gives you small amounts of vitamin A and omega 3, slightly higher in omega 6, choline, magnesium, phosphrous, potassium, sodium and selenium.  

MAKING BACON
It is so simple to make your own streaky bacon, all you need is a whole piece of high welfare organic or free range belly pork, a glass or wooden storage container with a lid and 1kg of salt, 100g soft dark brown sugar and pinch of black pepper.  Mix the salt with the rest of the ingredients, this is your dry-cure mix, place this in a tub as you will be using this for five days.

Place your belly pork on your work top and rub a generous handful of the dry-cure mix all over the belly pork, when you have thoroughly salted the pork all over place the belly in your glass or wooden box and place in the fridge.  keep the remaining dry-cure mix.

After twenty four hours you will see that the meat has released some juices into the bottom of your container, remove the pork belly and pour off the liquid, rub the belly with a couple of handfuls of the dry-cure mix, repeat this for five days, your bacon will be ready after day five, will keep for a couple of weeks in the fridge and be less salty than a longer cure of up to two weeks which would keep for months.

After five days take your belly and rinse clean of excess salt, pat dry, wrap in a clean muslin or grease proof paper and store in the fridge, slice off what you want as you need it, re-wrap and place back in the fridge, this will keep for a couple of weeks and you will know you are eating honest bacon.


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