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Baleron (Polish Smoked Pork Shoulder)

Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2012 19:33
by Baconologist
Does anyone know the recipe and procedure for making Polish Baleron (Smoked Pork Shoulder)?
It's mentioned by the Marianski's in the "Home Production" book but without detail.
Many of the pictures I'm able to find look like Cottage (or Daisy) Ham.


TIA

Bob

Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2012 21:19
by IdaKraut
Bob,
I'm with you. I would really like the recipe as well. Keeping my fingers crossed.

Posted: Fri Apr 20, 2012 00:13
by ssorllih
This is a small step in perhaps the right direction. http://www.sweetpoland.com/component/vi ... gory_id=21

Posted: Fri Apr 20, 2012 02:06
by Chuckwagon
The guy to ask is Jason Story - our member called Story28. He has his own charcuterie shop in Washington DC called 'Three Little Pigs'. He's a smart rascal and if he doesn't know, I don't know who would.

Posted: Fri Apr 20, 2012 02:30
by ssorllih
What I have gleaned from an internet search is that baleron is Polish for smoked, pressed ham made from the shoulder. Beyond that I have drawn a blank.

Posted: Fri Apr 20, 2012 02:42
by Baconologist
Thank you!
I sure hope that Jason or someone else will chime-in. If someone doesn't chime-in, I'm planning to go with the following recipe. The baleron, in most cases, appears to me to be the coppa.

http://www.zdrowodomowo.pl/Przepis/Bale ... C2%A0/669/

Here's the rough translation:

INGREDIENTS

Pork 2kg
peklosól 90 - 100g
1 teaspoon ground coriander
ground allspice 1 tsp
1 teaspoon ground cloves
bay leaf 1 teaspoon ground
5 cloves garlic
1 liter of water
Grid 16

DESCRIPTION OF PREPARATION
We cast 200ml water into a small pot - add the ground spices, and cook over low heat 10 minutes. Studzimy. Melt the remaining water and add peklosól lengthwise in half cloves of garlic. Add the broth with spices przestudzony.

Place the pork in a small saucepan and pour the marinade. Floods should przykrwać meat. Umiesczamy in the refrigerator or in a cool place (below 10 degrees) for 10 - 14days. Every 1-2 days, turn the neck. After upeklowaniu packed meat and leave the grid at night obcieknięcia suspended.

3-4godziny we smoke in the 30 - 40 degrees. Raise the temp to 50-60 degrees, and yet we smoke about 2 hours to get a nice dark color.

For smoking we oak. Smoked ham is put into the pot of boiling water (so that the whole was covered) and simmer 10 minutes. After this time, lower the water temperature to 80 degrees and cook for 1 1/2 to 2 hours to get inside baleronu 69 degrees.

We remove and chill under cold water for 5 - 10 minutes. Leave for 10 hours in the refrigerator.

I'll use the same flavor profile, but covert it to my method of brining.
I'll keep the smoking the same, using oak.

I wonder how it's usually served???

Bob

Posted: Fri Apr 20, 2012 03:08
by ssorllih
We do have some Polish speaking members here. Perhaps they could help with the rest of the translation. The temperatures are of course in celsius.

Posted: Fri Apr 20, 2012 15:41
by nuynai
Here's a recipe I found. Hope this may be of help. Combine the 2 and give it a shot. Good luck.


Ingredients

The membrane of lard
Pork lean, boneless - 2 kg
salt - 6 grams
nitrate 2 g
Juniper 5 - 8 grains
Allspice 5 - 6 seeds
10 grains of pepper naturally
1 clove garlic
Bay leaves 2 pieces of {an} more
For 1 kg of meat can be 1 gram of ammonium nitrate for curing





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Gammon
Wash meat under running cold water and pat dry with clean cloth. Crushed bay leaves and mix on a plate with salt and other spices. Meat rub spices and tightly arranged in a stone or enamel} {not padded with a pot, cover with a lid or a plate or charged. Store in a dark, cool cellar. After 11 - 12 hours removed, wrapped in a membrane of the fat, tightly lace up and tie the ends of the membrane and the whole of bloat in a cool smoke. Ham after smoking can be eaten raw or cooked. Boil it, putting in boiling water for about 2 - 3 hours, but not allowing the broth to a boil. Decoction should be slightly "blink"

PS:
Recipe from a cookbook, "Cook SILESIA EXCELLENT"
published in 1990 in Katowice and developed by Mrs: Elizabeth ŁABOŃSKĄ
Recipe provided by pedroo

Posted: Fri Apr 20, 2012 15:49
by nuynai
If you type in Baleron on Google search engine, plenty of info and recipes come up. Just make sure you hit the translate button, otherwise you better know Polish.

Posted: Fri Apr 20, 2012 15:52
by story28
Alright, you probably have noticed a lot of cultures seem to have specialty items only found in that part of the world. And to a point that is true, but it is pretty easy to quantify those items in the procedure they require.

Baleron isn't all that unlike our American variety of Canadian bacon. The cut of meat changes, perhaps the salinity of the brine, a spice or two, and the smoking wood and time, but those are just nuances of a brining/hot smoke combo.

You could say that Baleron is better because the fat is woven in to the meat as opposed to the back fat found on Canadian bacon and it is worth giving a shot.

But don't bog yourself down with translations and things like that on this one. We just had a Chinese member asking about Italian sausage. Everyone wants the exotic, even if that exotic isn't all that different from what they have at home.

Follow good practices such as rinsing/soaking the meat post brine to equalize the meat and don't skip out on letting the meat breathe in the refrigerator overnight to form a pellicle (dissolved proteins that migrate to the surface of the meat, making it sticky and easy for smoke to cling on to.)

A big decision will be how you "press" it. You will probably need a casing that is at least 5" in diameter, but even that could take some patience. At that point you should consider trussing it up very nice and tight. This will help aesthetically, but it is more for uniform cooking.

Allow the surface of the meat to dry out before you begin smoking, and definitely get some very nice color on that. Waldemar Kozik (in the Marianski books) has sent me some of his products and they are definitely smoky! I think he is using a much lower temperature smoke because the color of the finished product is always more on the red side.

Whole muscle pork is done at 145 F, but you can go a bit higher if you'd like. Just don't exceed 150 F, because the carry over cooking will increase the internal temperature substantially on a whole muscle that large.

Lastly, hang that meat overnight or for several days in a cellar or a dry cool place. That will allow the color to intensify and flavors to develop.

Another tip they do in Poland is to "paint" the ham. A mixture of paprika, Maggi soy sauce, and optional brown sugar give the ham a beautiful sheen. Allow that mixture to settle in for at least 12 hours and you will have a stunning product every time.

As far as a recipe - I would just follow the basic Canadian bacon method, as the surface to mass ratios are quite similar. Additionally, I wouldn`t add the spices to the brine. I would dust them evenly over the meat as it is forming its pellicle. That way, you will get more bang for your buck.

Sorry any grammatical or spelling errors. We had the Washington Post here Wed, our first sausage class last night, a 5 course dinner for 4 Sunday - not two mention the two legs of beef, whole pig, 5 bellies, 5 picnics, 30 racks of ribs, and 6 ducks that need attending. :shock:

BUT - I promise I will log on and follow up with any questions or recipes you might need. Also, I already talked to Waldemar Kozik about this topic and he is sending me some additional resources and references.

Posted: Sat Apr 21, 2012 04:24
by Chuckwagon
That's my boy! :lol:
Jason and I went to different schools together! :roll: What a guy.

Posted: Sat Apr 21, 2012 15:09
by Baconologist
Thanks so much for your response Jason!

So, I guess I was correct in assuming that it's much like American-style Canadian bacon or Cottage ham, both of which I've made countless times over many years.

Cottage ham is my "go to" cured meat, after bacon, of course! LOL

What is a cottage ham?
Here's a video of a guy cutting out a cottage ham.....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8xHjVjfpQ8

The "paint" has me intrigued.

The Maggi we get here is wheat based.
Can soy sauce or tamari be substituted?

Have you experimented with other "paints" for a good look?

Thanks again!

Bob

Posted: Sat Apr 21, 2012 19:55
by redzed
ssorllih wrote:We do have some Polish speaking members here. Perhaps they could help with the rest of the translation. The temperatures are of course in celsius.
Baleron might be a cousin to what Americans call Canadian bacon (in Canada we know it as back bacon), (Polędwica wędzona, in Polish) but it is, as has been pointed out, cottage ham, made essentially from a pork butt, or to be more specific, the center of the area between the picnic and butt. As far as the question on how to serve it, there are tons of recipes on the net on preparing cottage or picnic hams. In Poland it is usually served cold, sliced with rye bread, mustard or horseradish mixed with beetroot. It can also be thrown into a cabbage stew or scrabled with eggs for breakfast.

The computer translation is actually quite understandable. The 16 grid refers to a size 16 netting sold in Poland. Here is some clarification for the parts that were not translated:

We cast 200ml water into a small pot - add the ground spices, and cook over low heat 10 minutes. Studzimy.(Chill) Melt the remaining water and add peklosól lengthwise in half cloves of garlic. Add the (cooled) broth with spices przestudzony.

Place the pork in a small saucepan and pour the marinade. Floods should przykrwać meat.(the brine should cover the meat) Umiesczamy (place) in the refrigerator or in a cool place (below 10 degrees) for 10 - 14days. Every 1-2 days, turn the neck(butt). After upeklowaniu packed meat and leave the grid at night obcieknięcia suspended. (After curing put the meat into the netting, suspend it overnight so that the brine will run off.)

3-4godziny (hours) we smoke in the 30 - 40 degrees. Raise the temp to 50-60 degrees, and yet we smoke about 2 hours to get a nice dark color.

For smoking we oak. Smoked ham is put into the pot of boiling water (so that the whole was covered) and simmer 10 minutes. After this time, lower the water temperature to 80 degrees and cook for 1 1/2 to 2 hours to get inside baleronu 69 degrees.

We remove and chill under cold water for 5 - 10 minutes. Leave for 10 hours in the refrigerator.


Posted: Sat Apr 21, 2012 22:03
by ssorllih
Redzed, Thank you! That is very helpful.

Posted: Sat Apr 21, 2012 22:16
by ssorllih
If we were to reassemble a butchered pig. The picnic would attach to the butt at what we would call the shoulder joint. The picnic is actually more the elbow and upper arm and the junction of the shoulder blade and the humerus. the butt is severed from the loin. The flat section of shoulder blade has its remaining piece in the blade end of the loin. The rest of the loin consists of the ribs and the lumbar vertibrae It is severed just above the pelvis. The hams constitute the rest of the hog.