He had just finished making homemade pancetta, and showed that it was actually not as difficult as we all might have thought, and the idea [...]]]> So back on June 10, Michael Ruhlman (author most recently of the excellent book Ratios!), threw a challenge out to all those on the interweb, to make their own BLT from scratch.

He had just finished making homemade pancetta, and showed that it was actually not as difficult as we all might have thought, and the idea just took hold from there… I was intrigued, but having just planted out all my tomatoes in the greenhouse a mere 2 weeks earlier, figured I was up for the challenge!

To quote Michael, from scratch meant:

“You grow your tomato, you grow your lettuce, you cure your own bacon or pancetta, you bake your own bread (wild yeast preferred and gets higher marks but is not required), you make your own mayo.  All other embellishments, creative interpretations of the BLT welcome.”

This seemed do-able, I had all the elements in the works except for the bacon, and I had just gotten Eugenia Bone’s new book which also had a recipe for unsmoked bacon.  Even though it was something new, I had a couple of options to play with!

Since the challenge was issued, there has been a lot of waiting… for tomatoes to ripen, … for bacon to cure, … for bread to rise.   About 2 weeks ago, after coming back from camping, things were looking up on the tomato front, and I ran down to the supermarket and scored some side pork.  One of our local markets carries a lot of Asian meat cuts, and almost always has nice looking slabs of side pork.

For about 8 days, the pork rested in the fridge, being turned and massaged once a day.  After that rather than smoking it (because I had used pickling salt, rather than salt with nitrates) I cooked it at very low temp until it just registered 150 degrees.  It dried it off well, and it has been just fine in the fridge for the last week… waiting for the tomatoes.

FINALLY, the tomatoes ripened, and I had a few to choose from.  I had planted several varieties of heirloom tomatoes, including small yellow cherry tomatoes, Amish Salad, some large Russian heart-shaped tomatoes…and the ones I was really waiting for, the Green Zebra!

Lettuce: A French Crisp variety called Cardinale, which gets really crisp hearts if you let it head up, but retains its pretty red-tinged leaves.

At this point, I decided to go right from lunch, to dinner, and amp things up by going all burger with this thing!  I cooked up some bison burger patties with roasted garlic in them, and made up some chipotle-roasted garlic mayonnaise to round things out.   I have also been experimenting with gluten free breads, so took a first stab at a gluten-free burger bun (not as perfect as hoped for, but by this time I was kind of rushing things to get to the BLT goodness!)

Finally, after nearly 9 weeks of waiting, I present to you… the BBLT Burger, the Bison, Bacon Lettuce and Tomato Burger! with roasted garlic-chipotle mayonnaise and sweet potato fries! Everything on the plate from scratch!

Doesn’t get much better than this! Thanks Micheal for a really interesting challenge, and now that I know how to make bacon (and how truly superior it is) its going to be hard to buy it!.  Really, the taste is one thing, but also the texture of the fat on the homemade bacon is something else!!!

Bon appetit.