Until recently, the craft of curing and preserving meat–charcuterie–has been a mystery to the home cook. You merrily skip along to your local deli and buy your favourite proscuttio, chorizo or sausages and rarely does it cross your mind to wonder if you could make your own.

With the publication of Paul Bertolli’s Cooking by Hand and more recently Michael Ruhlman’s Charcuterie, the alchemical art of turning meats into vast arrays of preserved goods has now come to the attention of the keen home cook. Over at egullet there is an immensely long thread devoted to working through Charcuterie.

I discovered the concept of making your own pancetta through fellow food-blogger Matt’s adaptation of the Ruhlman recipe, so I just scaled everything down accordingly. I loved the smell of the marinade, so pungent with fresh bay leaves from the garden and loads of juniper berries. Reader beware, however… juniper berries know no fear where plastic bags are concerned. Despite double-bagging the pork belly, my fridge began to smell strongly of juniper after a day or two. I wound up transferring it to the beer fridge (turned down low, low, low) to keep our milk and yoghurts from smelling (and perhaps tasting) a bit odd.

After a week of marinating and regular turning, I washed the meat clean, spent ages drying the surfaces thoroughly and then covered the meat side with loads of freshly milled black pepper. As you can see in the picture, I didn’t get it spread evenly across the meat as there’s a bit of a build-up in the centre of the roll. It was still delicious, though.

I let it dry in the beer fridge which worked out really well. I’m not sure I’d ever be brave enough to leave meat hanging in the kitchen, garage, or wherever else charcuterie-fans have been curing their meat recently. To me that seems dangerous–even though it really isn’t as the books explain–but the fridge provides comforting familiarity even if it doesn’t yield an authentic pancetta.

I was really impressed with the results. The meat sliced beautifully and tasted incredible when I turned it into pancetta crisps to adorn a bowl of gnocchi–dressed with maro, if you were curious–and it was a huge hit with Lucas who wolfed down a man-sized portion of broad bean and pancetta risotto. It was quite superb in our staple pasta dish of leeks, mushrooms and pancetta, too.

Alas, all the pancetta is now gone. I’ll definitely be making more and I plan on finally laying down some cash for Charcuterie and discovering how to make smoked bacon as well as other delicious porky products!