On Saturday, October 17, 2015 at 9:32:26 AM UTC-7, muddy paws wrote:

> >
> Have you considered using trimmed and chopped pork hock or even
> pre-rendered salt pork?
>
> Alternately you could trim the fat off the bacon before adding it.

You could, but the bacon has it's on particular flavor. The bacon doesn't seem to add as much fat as the shoulder does, that's why I trim the fat as much as possible from the shoulder.