I’m thinking about pork bellies this morning. Oh, and God.

Porkbellies are a new direction for me. I’ve never made them, so I’m quite looking forward to the “shitshow.” For me the shitshow is the chaos of the unknown, the Schrodinger’s Cat of playing in the kitchen – disaster and success existing in equal proportions at the moment. At this point in the game, all I care about is edibility and data. I don’t want to have wasted the meat because it’s disrespectful to the critter that died, so even if it isn’t wonderful, and I will tell you if it’s not, it needs to be edible. Data is data and food is life.

I love data because it’s just information and has no agenda. It exists independently of politics. So few things do on this Independence Day, 2024. I think I’m just going to leave that there. I despise politics, not that I don’t think things need to be discussed and sussed out, but because so few people wanting to “discuss” politics are as committed to knowing what they are talking about as discussing it.

I’m standing in front of the mirror this morning, waiting to get the day under way, and I notice my boobs. It occurs to me that with the extra 20 pounds I’ve collected since I killed the diet with fire, they’re kinda nice. Not perky, not at my age, but fuller. Nice.

The porkbellies got me to thinking about God and doors closing and corners being turned and all that. I do feel genuine pressure not to fuck up the meat. I take the wasted life thing very seriously. It’s part of my “spiritual journey”. That got quoted because I’m not a spiritual person. I’ve tried to explain to people that I don’t actually believe anything. There are things I think and things that I hope, but belief is bullshit.

People call me an atheist and I don’t care. I did for a while but then I realized what people think of me is none of my business. It alters nothing about me. I will not be limited by their need to pigeonhole me. They are welcome to think what they want. I’ve also been called a Christian Nationalist, which is hilarious as I am neither a Christian, nor a Nationalist, but because I believe all things, humans included, are governed by Natural Law and that Liberty is inherent to existence, independent of the Laws of Man (Pretty sure I’ve covered this in a previous post.), nonetheless, I get lumped in with those yahoos.

I am, in fact, a Deist. I think there’s a God who created this Universe, but I can’t prove it. Best I’ve got is a hunch, so I can’t say definitively there is a God or Gods or that there isn’t/aren’t. I don’t have enough evidence one way or the other and I don’t really need it. Like data I exist, independent of religion’s agenda. I think the same way about God. If It exists, it does so without religion’s agenda.

Now, turning the page and getting back to pork bellies sort of, I’ve just stepped down as Master of my Masonic Lodge and am taking a break for a while. It’s OK, every Master of the Lodge steps down every year to be replaced by the next. Like PEZ, but with aprons.

One of my duties, which I tried to fob off onto anyone willing, was saying a blessing before a meal. My prayers aren’t like other peoples’ and the first time I did it before the meal, I was actually accused of being an atheist. It was awkward because atheists can’t be made Masons. That’s the number 1 rule. You have to believe in a Supreme Being. Doesn’t matter which one. Well, it's like rule 1a. Rule 1b is you have to have a naturally occurring penis.

I did eventually get better at the praying out loud thing before the end of my term. My last one went something like this:

“Great Architect of the Universe:

Thank you for existence. Thank you for empowering us to continue our existence by consuming the life energy of lesser creatures in the form of their flesh. Thank you, also for making them taste pleasant to us so that we might know we are supposed to eat them. That was very thoughtful. Well done!”

That’s me getting better at it. Consider how bad my first one was.

The thing is, if there is a creator of this Universe, I doubt very much It would be as needy and capricious as is portrayed by religions. I don’t think God needs some dumbass food blogging burnout to believe in It. I think God would be much more secure in Itself. But that’s me.

Existence is a gift, the ultimate gift. And so I think about the pig whose abdominal muscles I am about to prepare for my wife, son, and myself and I just hate knowing something had to die for us to live, but it is what it is. Energy must be transferred from one entity to another. It’s how “God” worked things out for this physical reality.

It’s illustrative, of course. It teaches us that everything in the Universe has a price and sometimes that price is fairly high. It teaches us not to waste existence, ours and those we must consume. To honor the things we extend ourselves with. Most importantly, it teaches us about our finite Nature. There is no “top” of the food chain because, at the end of the day, something will consume each and every one of us. At least our meatsuits. No idea about the rest of it; that’s a different post.

Alrighty. Now that my weird-ass God shit is out of the way, let’s talk about the cook.

The plan for the July 4 meal was simple. Porkbelly. Baby back ribs, both of which I got on sale several months ago and have been sandbagging for this very day. As stated, porkbelly is new and honestly, baby back ribs are not exactly well explored territory for me.

Sure, I’ve cooked them in a restaurant setting, but not a barbecue joint. Every time I’ve done them in a restaurant they were seasoned and baked in an oven, sometimes wrapped in plastic and then served with barbecue sauce on the side. Utility ribs, as it were. Cooking them at home is a completely different story.

Now that I sit here and think about it, I can’t say for certain I’ve cooked baby back ribs at home, ever. Neato. I mean, I seem to know what I’m doing. I peeled them and rubbed them, smoked and wrapped them. It was awkward at first, the removing of the membrane, but then I remembered how to French rib roasts and it wasn’t a problem. Got the first one off in one piece. The second one was a little tougher. Things I could do better next time:

1) Don’t count on my water vessel in the smoker to keep them moist. It did well enough, but I think periodic spritzing with flavorful liquid would be better.

2) When I wrap them, toss some moisture in with them for a last minute “braising”.

Overall, they were fairly decent, though I wasn’t able to easily pull the bones out like I like. Again, moisture would have helped. Once separated, the meat came off cleanly. I also did not sauce them because there was more than enough sauce on the porkbellies. Instead, I trusted my pig and my rub and it turned out OK. Always trust what is and work from there.

I did a lot of research on what the hell to do with pork bellies. Apparently, pork belly recipes are like assholes. Everyone seems to have one. So instead of using someone else’s recipe, I decided to do what my meat told me to do. It’s uncured, unsliced bacon. Yes, there are thin muscles there and huge amounts of fat with different textures. Kinda like if God made living lasagna.

Now I was a little disappointed my porkbelly had no rind on it, because I really like cracklin’ and was looking forward to it, but on the flip side, I didn’t have to add that extra step of basting it with really hot oil. Instead, I needled it, through the fat side only, to try to break up anything that was in there. Then I hacked it up into roughly 2” x 2” chunks, and rubbed them overnight with the rib rub. I’ll post a recipe on that at some point, but this is foodlab, so it’s not, strictly speaking, necessary.

After the rub through the night, it went on the smoker with cherry wood chips. I prefer fruit woods when smoking pig. Just works out well together. Pig loves sweet. It was with that in mind, I turned to the post smoking glaze. Essentially, I made “pork belly burnt ends”, though I really don’t like that term because it makes it sound, well, burned. They just look that way due to the dark mahogany color and well developed “bark”. Barbecue terms. What can you do?

I went with brown sugar, a stick of butter, some fresh, unmolested garlic cloves and plum jam. I thought the plum would match nicely with the cherry smoke and was not disappointed. Nothing with a Scoville unit was used as I also fed these to my wife.

Once they were smoked and temped out to around 190° F, I popped them into a foil pan, coated them with the glaze, covered and returned them to the smoker for another 30 minutes, just to get the glaze to set.

All in all, they turned out fairly well, but they were just so rich. Way too much fat to eat more than one or two at a sitting. I also don’t know if I’ll do them again. If I do, the plum will probably be replaced with marmalade. I think the citrus will help cut the richness nicely.

Happy cooking.