Hasta La Ideas

Maximize the meat experience with this DIY guide

To true pork connoisseurs, store-bought bacon is an affront to the culinary arts. Ramp up your cured meat game by embracing the tastiest of DIY projects: homemade bacon. “The Better Bacon Book” marks the latest iPad-exclusive how-to publication in Open Air Publishing‘s digital instructional series. This edition takes you through adventures in everyone’s favorite breakfast meat, covering everything from setup and curing to slicing and frying. Hailed by chefs around the world for its seemingly limitless potential, bacon and its counterparts are carefully detailed in this indispensable guide.

Tom Mylan, executive butcher at The Meat Hook in Brooklyn, guides users through 20 instructional videos. The book contains tutorials for making slab, face and Canadian bacon, in addition to guanciale and pancetta. Mylan shows you how to butcher the meat, build your own smoker from a trash can and cook the perfect slice. For those not ready to dive fully into homemade bacon, the app also lists the top suppliers of mail-order bacon, curated by the author of “Zingerman’s Guide to Better Bacon“, Ari Weinzweigeg.

The Better Bacon Book also includes recipes from top restaurants and bars, so whether you’re spreading on some bacon jam or slurping down a plate of clams with rye whisky and bacon, there are endless options to get your pork belly fix. Open Air has upped its game in this app, including a feature to allow users to zoom into pig parts at various moments in the instruction videos called “image hotspots”. The book’s completely original content is now available for purchase from the iTunes App Store.