I just want to find out a couple of things, and may not always be using the right terms, so please bear with me.
I grew up in the Netherlands and we always used to buy a slab of "spek", cured belly pork on the rind. I think unsmoked but I am not sure. I also think it was not cooked through to anything like 70 oC or so.
We used it for frying with eggs, as lardons etc etc. It would be kept in the fridge and would dry out a bit. The nice thing was that it wouldn't stick to the pan.
I am looking at making something like that. I suppose pancetta would be closest to it?
Something else I would like to find out:
If I cure some belly pork and then smoke at a fairly low temperature (somewhere 35 oC or so), do I then have to finish it in the oven to 69 oC internal temperature or can I leave out that step and keep some in the fridge for consumption in the next 10 days and freeze the remainder?
Cooking it seems to me like it would give me another product, more like what I know as "katenspek" and of which I don't know the English name. I think it is called something similar in German though.
Thanks