Returning to hometown to farm: The apocalypse system arrived ten years earlier?

Chapter 98: Smoked bacon, building a high wall
It was a sunny day with the highest daytime temperature reaching over 20 degrees Celsius. The wild boar meat that Li Xiang had pickled earlier had already been dried, but it still lacked a little flavor as it was missing the final step, which required smoking with pine and cypress branches.

At this time, New Year's Day has passed and it is the beginning of the twelfth lunar month, and it is the right time to smoke bacon.

This is a traditional method of preserving meat in the south. In ancient times, there were no refrigerators, and the temperature in the south was high, so meat would easily spoil, so it needed to be stored by various means such as air drying and smoking.

Some people in areas where people don't have the habit of eating bacon may ask curiously, now almost every household has a refrigerator, isn't it better to eat fresh pork? Why do we have to go through the trouble of making bacon?

In fact, bacon, especially smoked bacon, is not only a means of preserving meat for a long time, but also a very rare delicacy. Its rich aroma and soft taste are incomparable to fresh pork.

Li Xiang built a simple smokehouse in the backyard, hung strips of bacon inside, piled pine branches underneath, and lit them to start smoking.

Because these pine branches were cut down not long ago and were still green, even though they were rich in oil, they still could not burn in a large fire, so a lot of thick smoke was produced.

The pine tree itself has a unique fragrance. After burning and smoking, aromatic substances penetrate into it, and the bacon also develops a unique flavor.

Using cypress branches is also a good idea, but there are more pine trees on the mountain behind Li Xiang’s home, so what was cut back were basically pine branches, mixed with a small amount of cypress branches and ash branches.

The oak tree, also known as the oak, is a tree with a unique aroma and is often used in the West to make wine barrels. Black fungus often grows on this tree, which tastes better and is more nutritious than black fungus grown on other trees, and is revered as a top-quality mountain delicacy.

Different places have different production techniques, and other trees are also used, such as apple trees, pear trees, cherry trees, apricot trees, camphor trees, etc. Usually local materials are used, and whichever suitable tree is more common will be used.

Grandma was also helping, but after the fire started, the smoke was a little heavy, so Li Xiang asked her to leave.

In fact, you don't have to stay inside all the time. When the smoke gets thick, you can close the door, go out for a short break, and come back in to replenish it when the pine branches are almost burned. Otherwise, is it to smoke meat or people?
This process is relatively long, usually one or two days of smoking. The smoking process is actually a process of disinfection, sterilization and slow heating. When the smoking is finished, the bacon is basically cooked and only needs simple processing when eating.

Wild boar meat becomes relatively dry and hard after being air-dried. At this time, slowly smoking and heating it with pine branches can soften the meat and improve its taste.

In fact, it might be better if you use pork belly with alternating fat and lean meat, but many people nowadays don’t like to eat fatty meat, and there is relatively little fat on wild boars.

As the New Year approaches, many families begin to make smoked meat and smoked sausages.

However, some places have recently issued some inhumane announcements, prohibiting the private smoking of cured products. Smoked bacon, sausages, etc. must be sent to designated centralized smoking points. The official reason is to deal with air pollution.

Many people think that it is under the guise of environmental protection to promote the meat products of certain companies. For rural people, it is better to smoke the meat at home. Sending it to a processing point for centralized smoking will cost an extra processing fee, which adds extra expenses.

Fortunately, the county where Li Xiang lives has not issued such incomprehensible regulations, so he is working hard at home.

Air pollution? The end of the world is coming, who cares about air pollution?

After the smoked meat was ready, Li Xiang picked up a piece and smelled it. It was indeed very good. The fishy smell of wild boar meat had basically disappeared, replaced by a unique and rich meaty aroma.

He used his white-tooth dagger to cut off a thin slice, put it in his mouth and tasted it carefully. The taste was very peculiar. In addition to the salty aroma of bacon, there were also complex flavors of grass, lemon, pepper, cinnamon, cloves, bean, fruit, etc., and also a light sweetness.

The reason why it tastes sweet is because a small amount of white sugar is added during the pickling process.

As for the other aromas, one is the flavor substances produced by the oxidation degradation of proteins and lipids and microbial fermentation; the other is the special flavor given by compounds such as phenols and furans produced by the burning of pine, cypress branches and Chinese ganoderma branches during the smoking process.

Li Xiang prepared the smoked meat and recorded the video. He immediately sent out the pre-orders that he had promised to his fans through SF Express. As for the rest, he kept some at home and hung them on a wooden shelf in the cellar, and then sent some to his grandparents and sister-in-law. At dinner, he took a small piece of smoked meat and made a simple dish of stir-fried smoked meat with chili and garlic. The chili was red, the garlic sprouts were green, and the smoked meat was brown-red. It was mixed with white garlic cloves and yellow ginger slices. When stir-frying, he added a little bit of high-proof liquor, mixed with the aroma of sorghum liquor. After serving it on the table, it was delicious and tasty. Even grandma ate a small bowl of rice more than usual.

The weather was fine and there was not much farm work to do, so Li Xiang's family finally started construction and built a high wall.

It wasn’t repaired before because there was no money, but now Li Xiang is not short of money.

So he designed the plan himself, hired a construction team, asked the master to help review it, improved the plan, and then started work immediately.

The courtyard wall winds around the former backyard, and is more than 2.5 meters long, 60 meters high, and centimeters thick. It is no exaggeration to say that it is a high-walled courtyard.

The rapeseed flowers planted before have experienced heavy snow cover and nourishment from the snow water, and are growing well.

Rapeseed is cold-resistant. Before the heavy snow, Li Xiang had taken protective measures in his own vegetable field, so not many rapeseed flowers were frozen to death. On the contrary, after experiencing the wind and snow, the remaining rapeseed flowers became even more tenacious.

A high courtyard wall was built around the rape flowers, enclosing them inside. When spring comes and the flowers bloom, it will be a beautiful scenery.

Then a back door and a side door were left in the courtyard wall. The back door leads to the back mountain. The side door leads to the front of the house. This door is relatively large. If anything is transported in the future, you can use this side door and drive the car directly into the backyard.

Then a dog hole was left for Erhuang to go in and out. As for the kittens, they were so high up that such a small wall could not stop them.

The mother cat has begun teaching the kittens how to climb walls and hunt, and she takes the kittens running around on roofs or trees every day.

Of course, there are also teachers on washing faces, licking fur, and burying feces to hide one's own smell.

Li Xiang also specially filmed several videos of cat mothers teaching their children and posted them online, which attracted many fans to like them.

There was one little mouse that was particularly miserable. It was caught by its mother cat from somewhere and then used as a teaching prop, being tortured by the five little ones in turn.

There are actually no mice in Li Xiang's house, and ordinary mice don't dare to come. It is estimated that the mother cat went on a long expedition and caught them from an abandoned house far away.

There are many houses in the village, all of which are uninhabited and have become a paradise for snakes, insects, rats and ants.

In addition to the fence, Li Xiang also built a pigpen that could accommodate two or three pigs.

I don't dare to raise too many pigs, not because I'm afraid of swine fever, but if I raise too many, and if I have to go out for something and don't come home for a few days, it will be too hard for my grandmother to feed so many pigs by herself and she won't be able to handle it.

After all, grandma is old, so it's okay to feed the chickens and ducks, just sprinkle a few handfuls of grain, cats and dogs are okay, they don't eat much. But pigs are different, they can eat and produce, and it's hard to carry so much pig food.

The house of Grandma San was also built, and she moved out of Li Xiang's house reluctantly. It was not renovated much, so there was no need for ventilation to disperse the formaldehyde. Grandma San felt very embarrassed after living in Li Xiang's house for so long, and wanted to give money to Li Xiang's grandmother, but Li Xiang's grandmother refused.

In fact, Li Xiang wouldn’t mind if Sanpo continued to live in his house.

(End of this chapter)