Pressure cooker speck three-ways

Dear Reader,

Happy Saturday. I hope you’re well and you’ve enjoyed the past week. I’ve enjoyed a brilliant week apart from the worst week of hay fever so far this year. Praise God for antihistamine drugs 🙂

During the week, a member of the Facebook group “Cooking meals for one,” Merryn suggested I write a post about the speck I’d cooked.

For readers who don’t know, speck is smoked pork belly. I usually describe it as fancy bacon.

The easiest way to cook it is in a pressure cooker. I cut the block of pork into three thick longitudinal strips. If you didn’t use a pressure cooker, I’d recommend stripping away the rind, which can be a little chewy. Because speck is pork belly, it feels fatty and dense in your hand. I use a sharp knife to slice it safely due to the denseness of the pork. For example, I use my Dick butchers knife.

For flavouring and to balance the nutritional value, I usually add some lentils, whole peppercorns, Chinese-five-spice powder, star anise, and master stock.

For a small block of speck, I cook the meat for 30 minutes under pressure.

The three strips make a minimum of three meals for me. This week, I got four meals out of the three strips.

Pressure cooker speck and pork belly with lentils, peppercorns, potato mash, and baby green peas.

Wednesday evening’s meal.

Pressure cooker speck and pork belly with lentils, peppercorns, potato mash, and baby green peas.

Pressure cooker speck, lentils, and peppercorns wrapped in puff pastry with a salad.

Thursday evening’s meal.

Pressure cooker speck, lentils, and peppercorns in puff pastry with a salad

Pressure cooker speck, lentils, and peppercorns wrapped in puff pastry with smokey barbecue sauce.

Friday’s lunch.

Pressure cooker speck, lentils, and peppercorns in puff pastry with smokey barbecue sauce

Pressure cooker speck, lentils, and peppercorns cooked in pumpkin soup.

Tonight’s meal consisted of a pumpkin soup made with roast Kent pumpkin, coconut cream, along with the lentils and peppercorns blended into a soup. I broke up the speck and added it to the soup.

Ingredients

  • Leftover cooked speck, lentils, and peppercorns
  • Kent pumpkin
  • Olive oil
  • Iodised salt
  • Dark brown sugar
  • Coconut cream
  • Vegetable stock

Instructions

  1. Lovingly sharpen your cook’s knife (as iron sharpens iron, so a friend sharpens a friend Proverbs 27:17 NLT).
  2. Remove the seeds and the connective tissue of the core of the pumpkin.
  3. Carefully cut the pumpkin into chunks approximately 8 cm³. Leave the skin.
  4. Gently rub oil over the pumpkin chunks with your hands.
  5. Rub in some salt and then rub in some of the dark brown sugar.
  6. Place the pumpkin pieces onto a baking sheet and place them into a hot oven until the pumpkin is soft enough to pierce with a sharp probe. The aim is to penetrate the pumpkin’s flesh, and on withdrawing the instrument, no pumpkin residue should be on the metal surface. It should go in and out smoothly. Ideally, the caramelisation of the surface of the flesh with the aid of sugar will have occurred.
  7. In a saucepan, add the cooked pumpkin, coconut cream, stock, lentils, and peppercorns. 
  8. Bring the soup to a simmer and cook until the coconut cream begins to thicken.
  9. Puree the soup with a stick blender.
  10. Continue simmering the soup and drop in pieces of your pulled speck gently while stirring.
  11. Serve the soup into a bowl and garnish with whatever herbs you feel desirable.
  12. Give thanks to the Lord for the meal.
  13. Take a large spoon and enjoy the soup.

Takeaways

The soup is good. It is thick and spicy. The peppercorns in the soup are like a party in my mouth. The speck is tender, succulent, and moist. The coconut cream gives the soup an Asian feel. To augment that, I should have added some curry paste, perhaps, a laksa paste.

Final thoughts

  1. How was your week?
  2. Are you a fan of bacon? I went out this morning and enjoyed eggs benedict with bacon. It’s the first bacon I’ve eaten in months.
  3. I reckon if you like bacon, you’ll love speck. Would you please give it a go and let me know what you think?
  4. Do you have plans for Christmas? I’m looking forward to summer.

8 Responses

  1. This is brilliant thank you so much Gary for sharing your recipe and method. Having speck as the main meal instead of adding it chopped and fried to soups or legumes is fantastic. I love how you have baked the speck with lentils/peppercorns into a delicious and pretty pastry meal. Baking pumpkin and pureeing into a soup with these additions is also fantastic. Thank you again for listening and writing this blog regarding speck and friends. Cooking Meals for One on FB is a lovely group and you can learn so much from other members, all of whom are encouraging and warm as well. Bacon is always welcome, a weekly egg and bacon muffin is to be enjoyed, or bacon with avocado on toasted focaccia is one serving of fruit and vege… My week has been good too thanks, still going through boxes from last year’s moving adventure. It was a lovely weekend to spend in the garden before the always welcome rain came down yesterday. I hope you have a lovely, well fed week 😀

    1. Dear Merryn,
      Thank you for taking the time to respond so comprehensively and for your very kind words.
      I hope the task of box emptying and sorting ends soon for you so you can enjoy your new environs 🙂

  2. Am going to look for speck. Although, the peppercorns packed in that puff pastry made my eyes water just looking at it! Had blackened chicken once, it was so peppery my lips were numb after one half of the breast!! Have almost all my shopping done. Need to get the box ready to send to VA and wait for things to arrive to be hidden and eventually wrapped. Will post Thanksgiving cards this next week or two and OH, must cut up that punkin on the porch. Grabbed it the other day and the stem stabbed me with one of those pokey hairs and so I opted to ignore it. Showed that pumpkin!!!!

    1. Thanks Kris. I really like that numbing sensation of pepper. It’s what I always hope will happen.
      I wish we had a Thanksgiving tradition to celebrate here in Australia. I’m not sure it would need to feature pumpkin. I’d be keen if it featured fresh seafood!

      1. I’m going to cook down the pumpkins this weekend. When someone a bit stronger is around to cut them in half for me!!!! Sometimes those things are stubborn to bust into!!

Hi there, leave a comment if you want.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.