Finished Guanciale

Guanciale is cured pork jowl. I used a recipe from Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking and Curing which called for the jowls to be cured in salt for five days with garlic cloves and thyme. I then hung them for three weeks at 60 degrees (our wine cooler worked great for that). A lot of recipes call for Guanciale but you can pretty much use it in any recipe which calls for bacon or pancetta. We are planning to fry it up and include it in a carbonara tomorrow night.