Day 86: Guanciale

Guanciale (pronounced gwan-CHA-lay) is a bacon that's made from pork cheeks. Cheeks are wonderful parts of animals that are totally underused. They have lots of fat, lots of texture, and they can be cheap. Think Halibut cheeks or Barbacoa. Just little flecks of Guanciale are nice in scrambled egg or on a salad, and it can be amazing with corn. It's the best way to go for Spaghetti Carbonera (the pasta that has an egg-based white sauce and bacon). In Southern States, they smoke the cheeks (guanciale is unsmoked)  and call this "hog jowl" and used in dishes like collard greens. It can be substituted with Pancetta, but the fattiness is a different taste.

The texture is nice and chewy, but you really get that genuine dark meat and salt flavour in every bite. In the picture, you see lots of meat, but much of it below the picture is actually super fatty. And the texture on the edges, if you cook it right, gets nice and crispy. I prefer it cubed, because you get the chewiness of it, but thin like this is good and a little goes a lot further. I got this from Brickworks Farmers Market. At  a whopping $50/lb, this is something of a treat. A little $10 or $15 piece will flavour a good pound of pasta. To put this in perspective, your regular breakfast bacon usually retails at around $3-$5/lb. Pancetta is a bit more than this. Something like Iberian Ham de Bellota can run you up to $600/lb, so with that in mind, $50 is a deal, right?

On guanciale
Guanciale is Italian cured pork cheek or jowl. It's traditionally used in classic pastas, like spaghetti all carbonara and bucatini all'amatriciana. Because it's largely fat, guanciale has a more seductive pork flavor and delicate texture than cured meat that comes from the belly (like pancetta, which is a common substitute, though the flavor isn't the same).

To make guanciale, you rub pork cheeks with some combination of salt, sugar, pepper, herbs and spices and then air dry them for several weeks.