In this installment
Bacon bits
About Spotted Trotter
Bacon tales: The bacon tree
Bacon bits
Made in Atlanta, Georgia
Cure: Wet Cured in sorghum syrup, salt, and spices for a secret length of time. Finished with black pepper
Smoke: It’s a secret and slow
Taste: A little smoky, meaty and sweet.
About Spotted Trotter
Kevin Ouzts started the Spotted Trotter as a mobile charcuterie operation back in 2010. A trained chef (he cooked at The French Laundry in Napa and learned to make charcuterie from The Fatted Calf), Kevin founded the Spotted Trotter in Atlanta so he could be close to the best ingredients: pigs. As Kevin puts it: “…the Spotted Trotter is here to celebrate the terroir of the South Easter United States by using local ingredients in the charcuterie we create.”
Terroir—a term originally used in the wine world—is attributed to a lot of foods nowadays, but the point is this: things taste like where they are from. With wine, it could mean grapes grown on the western slopes of the valley have more iron in the soil and thus a richer, deeper, more mineral type of flavor. When it comes to charcuterie, it means using regional ingredients like toasted pecans, mayhaw, peppers, peaches, toasted peanuts, and even sorghum (like in this bacon). Kevin is part of the recent movement around American charcuterie. They’re taking centuries old recipes, following milennium old processes, and giving them a modern American twist. It’s a balancing act between tradition and innovation and if done right you get something really special. That’s exactly what we’ve got here.
Local pork bellies are cured with salt, brown sugar, sorghum syrup, and finished off with a bit of black pepper to balance all that sweetness. Georgia has delicious terroir. Gotta be the sorghum.
Bacon tales: The bacon tree
Back in the 18th century, somewhere out west there was a group of American cavalry soldiers who were lost in the wilderness. They’d been without food for days and were starving. As they approached a small hill they came upon an old Jewish guy sitting there. Barely able to walk, the soldiers straggled up to him, and asked, clearly close to desperate, if he knew where they could find something to eat. “Vell,” he said, with a heavy Eastern European Jewish accent, “I hoyd there vas a bacon tree up on the other side of the hill. But I’m not supposed to send you there.” The soldiers however were excited. A bacon tree? Just over the hill? What could be better?
Despite the warnings of the old Jewish guy, they proceeded over the hill. There they were almost immediately overtaken by a group of bandits who’d been hiding in rocky openings in the hillsides. All of the troops were killed except for the captain who, though wounded, managed to crawl back over the hill to where the old Jewish guy was sitting. “Oy vey, vat happened?” he asked the captain incredulously. The captain related the story. “Why didn’t you warn us?” he said with obvious anger in his voice. “Vait a minute,” said the Jewish fellow. He got open his Yiddish-English dictionary, flipped through it. Suddenly, he slapped his head and said with great remorse, “Oy! I feel terrible! It’s my mistake—it vasn’t a ‘bacon tree.’ It vaz a ‘ham-bush.’”