Makin Bacon

One our projects this year is to come up with a bacon recipe that is competition worthy.  It seems that our butchers bacon right out of the case doesn't cut it with the judges.  So, I stopped by our local spice shop and purchased a bottle of curing salt to start our journey.

This salt above is the same as Prague Powder #1.  You can cure your meats with regular salt alone, but that is risky when you take bacteria formation into account.  The curing salt prevents the formation of bacteria during the curing and smoking process ensuring food safety.  We don't want to get any judges sick, do we?  A quick note here.  The salt is tinted pink so that you can distinguish it from regular table salt.  Do not use this salt as a substitute for regular table salt.

I wanted to try a wet cure this time.  So used the recipe on the back of the label as a basis: 2 oz cure salt, 10 oz salt, 4 oz. sugar, per gallon of cold water.  Instead of all water, we substituted 1/2 gallon of apple cider for half of the water.  For our sugar source, we used turbinado sugar, otherwise known as Sugar in the Raw at your grocery store.

I placed all of the above ingredients into a dutch oven and heated until all of the salt and sugar was dissolved.  Then I chilled over night.

 
The next day, I place my pork bellies into food safe container and poured the brine on top of the meat.      After ensuring that all surfaces of the pork were covered by the curing liquid, I placed the container in the refrigerator for a seven day nap.  

After seven days, I removed the bellies from the liquid, rinsed thoroughly with cold water, then patted dry.  I placed the meat on a wire rack to dry while I started up my smoker.

I brought the smoker up to a temperature of 225 F, then added smoking wood to the ash pan.  Used a mix of hickory, apple, and pecan.  Once the smoke was thin and blue, I placed the pork bellies on the top rack of my smoker.  My goal was to bring the internal temperature of the meat up to 150 F just to be on the safe side when it comes to bacteria formation.  Remember, once you get above 140 F, bacteria formation quits and the bacteria start to be killed in the process.

Here is the bacon about one hour into smoking:

After the bacon reached 150 F, about three hours, I removed the meat from the smoker and placed it in a refrigerator to cool down.  Cooling helps to firm up your bacon, making it easier to slice.  Hope is the team slicer, she cut the bacon slabs in half, across the grain, so that they would fit in our slicer.  After slicing, we vacuum packed for freezing in one pound packages.

The aroma of smoked bacon was driving us and the dogs crazy.  We took a few pieces and fried them up to taste.  As an experiment that was a baseline for our bacon project, we were quite happy with the results.  Not too salty, not too sweet, just a hint of apple from the cider used in the wet cure.  A great start to our bacon R&D project.  Stay tuned for more as we tinker with the flavors.

Thanks for stopping by,

Bill

Home Cured Bacon, Step by Step

Once we purchased our larger smokers, one of the things on our bucket list to try was homemade, cold smoked bacon.  Bacon is good, bacon is great, bacon is addictive!  Last year when we made some, the results were great.  I used Hi Mountain Buckboard Bacon cure last year, then when we smoked the bacon, we just took to a lower temperature than called for in the box recipe.  This year, I wanted to try and cure the bacon the old fashioned way: with salt only.  We are trying to get away from those nitrates that you find in regular cured meats.  So, I talked with some people at work who cure and preserve some of their venison from hunting season and applied it to homemade, cured bacon.  Here is the process, step by step, and the results.  I think you'll like what you see...

First, we purchased a 5 lb pork belly from Dave's Country Meats...

As you can see from the side, it is a blank canvas, just ready to become tasty bacon...

All I did to prepare this belly for curing was to rinse well with water, pat dry, and cut a small flap of meat off of the back to make the piece of meat uniform...

Looks a lot like ribs without the bone?  Well, you are right.  Another name for pork belly is pork side.  It comes from the side of the pig and is part of where the spare ribs come from.  You could actually cook this piece of meat like ribs.  That just might be a future post...  But, I digress...

Next, I placed the pork belly in a non-reactive container large enough to hold 5 pounds of future, bacony goodness.  I just happen to have a ceramic wash basin that has been in the family for years and was passed down to me by my mother.  It is perfect for mixing large batches of stuffing, etc...

Into my spice shaker, I placed 1/4 cup of sea salt, 1 tbsp of sage, and 1 tbsp of turbinado sugar.  One of the pros of curing your own bacon is that you can add whatever flavors you would like.  I was going for more of a traditional savory/sweet taste with my first experiment.  But, you could add garlic, dried ground peppers, cracked pepper...  The possibilities are endless.

I thoroughly seasoned both sides of the belly making sure to cover all surfaces, placed aluminum foil on the top, and put in the refrigerator for 24 hours.  After 24 hours, here is what the belly looked like...

And here is the liquid that was extracted from the meat due to the salt...

A closer inspection of an outside piece of the belly shows that the salt is doing what we want: removing the liquid...

The belly at this point is feeling firmer due to the reduced water content and turning that red color that comes from the curing process.

At this point, I washed and dried the container and re-seasoned the belly with 2 tbsp of sea salt, 1 tbsp of sage, and 1 tsp of turbinado sugar.  Then, I covered with foil, and put back into the refrigerator for 24 more hours...

This process was repeated every other night for a total of five days.  After the fifth day, I soaked the meat in cold water for about an hour to remove as much of the salt as possible and patted dry.  Here was the pork, ready for the smoker...

At this point, I heated up the smoker to 175 F and added hickory to the ash pan.  I placed the belly on the top rack and the meat received a generous 12 hour smoke.  I added hickory to the ash pan every hour to ensure the belly was getting a healthy amount of smoke.  We like smoke around here!  Here is what the belly looked like after the 12 hour smoke...

I covered the pan with foil and placed the bacon outside to cool so that it would firm up for slicing, about 4 hours at 28 F outside.

We have a smaller slicer, so we cut into quarters so that it would fit on the slicer...

Sliced heaven on a plate...

Vacuum packed and ready for the freezer...

A couple of test slices, fried up for quality control...

The flavor was outstanding.  The outside pieces were a bit salty, but the rest was perfect, bacon goodness.  In the future, I am going to experiment with different flavors and smoking woods to find the perfect slab of bacon.

Thanks for stopping by...

Bill