Makin’ Bacon!
Beautiful, delicious, pork belly goodness… Bacon can be found in any grocery store meet section. But let’s face it, that stuff sucks! I wanted thick, smokey, peppery, delicious (my mouth is watering as I type this) bacon. So, I decided to make my own.
Buy a Belly
Start with pork belly. I found it at a local butcher. Trim off the skin. I use a butchers knife. Start at one corner and work your way down the belly. A paper towel is useful in gripping the skin while you cut.
Depending on how big of a belly you bought, you might want to cut it down now. I cut into pieces that are about 1 lb each, sized to fit within a gallon zip lock bag.
Rub It In, Rub It In
All of these recipes are all per 1 lbs of meat. Weigh your bacon and ratio the recipes accordingly. Make sure you are accurate with your measurements of the curing salt. (See the statement of caution* at the bottom of this post.) Pick a flavor for you bacon.
Basic Pepper Bacon
Per 1 lbs of meat:
1 Tbsp Morton’s Tender Quick
1 Tbsp Dark Brown Sugar
1 Tbsp Maple Syrup
1 tsp Coarse Black Pepper
1 tsp Garlic Powder
Bourbon Bacon
Per 1 lbs of meat:
1 Tbsp Morton’s Tender Quick
1 Tbsp Maple Syrup
2 tsp Dark Brown Sugar
1/2 tsp Garlic Powder
3 oz Bourbon (add this to the bag with your bacon, being careful not to wash off any of the rub)
Note: While you are smoking this, you can also brush on some additional bourbon to form a glaze.
Barbecue Bacon
Per 1 lbs of meat:
1 Tbsp Morton’s Tender Quick
1 Tbsp Honey
1 Tbsp Dark Brown Sugar
1 tsp Red Pepper Flakes
1 tsp Paprika
1 tsp Garlic Powder
1/2 tsp Cumin
Now, rub it in. Evenly coat all surfaces.
The Cure
Once coated, put the meat into baggies, push all of the air out and seal. Put these bag in some sort of dish (anything that will hold any potential spills) and place in the fridge. Once a good brine starts to develop in the baggie, flip them over.
Continue to flip the bags once a day.
Once the belly is finished curing (it will be firm everywhere), pull it out of the baggie, rinse it off (get rid of all of the brine on the surface), and pat it dry. Congratulations, you now have bacon! But you can make it even better.
Salt Check
It’s time to check out what you’ve made. Slice off a small piece of bacon. You’re going to fry it up to get a check on the salt flavor. Keep in mind, some of the flavors will mellow out when the bacon is smoked, but if the salt flavor is too strong, toss the whole slab of bacon into a shallow pan and cover it with water. Leave it here for an hour. Pull it out of the water, pat it dry and then you can fry up a small piece again to verify the salt level. Repeat this until the salt is where you like it .
[The next is an optional step. From what I’ve read, this is a traditional step but not a required step. I chose to skip it. Your mileage my vary.] Put the bacon on a cooking rack or anything else that will allow air to circulate on all sides and toss this back in the fridge, uncovered, for a day. A nice little crust will develop.
Smoking
Time to smoke ’em if you got ’em. Bacon isn’t bacon without a little smoke. I use a about equal parts lump charcoal and apple wood chunks in my Big Green Egg.
At this point, I like to rub the surface down with some coarse black pepper. Cake it on there.
Now for smoking, there are two paths you can take here: hot smoking or cold smoking.
Hot Smoking
If you did not use a curing mix that includes nitrites, you absolutely have to hot smoke your bacon.* This involves smoking your bacon until the internal temperature is 150*F. Set your smoker to around 200*F and smoke until you hit your internal temp. The down side to this is that you’ll lose some of your bacon fat to the smoking process. Your bacon will be completely cooked and ready to eat right off of the smoker. When you cook it for your breakfast, you’ll essentially just be heating it back up.
Cold Smoking *
Again, only do this if you used a curing mix and not just regular salt. Also, your bacon absolutely has to be cooked separately before you eat it. This smoking method does not cook the bacon. You want to do this at a nice, low temp. If it get the bacon too hot (around 130*F), you’ll start to render the fat out of the bacon. You don’t want that. You just want the smoke flavor. Aim for a smoker temp of 100*F for 6-8 hours. You just have to work at keeping the temps low. Doing this on a cold winter day does help.
Chill Out
After the bacon is done on the smoker (or, after you can’t stand waiting any longer), let it cool down to room temp, wrap it in plastic wrap and toss it in the freezer. Getting it nice and cold will make it a lot easier to slice.
Pig Out
Once it is cold (about an hour or so), slice off some goodness and fry it up. This should keep in your freezer for a few months. I doubt you will have the will power for that though. Enjoy some of the best bacon you’ll ever eat.
* Note: When you cold smoke meat, you are doing so at a low temperature. This does not cook the meat. It is not safe to eat off of the smoker. Add to these temps an oxygen deficient environment and typically this would be the perfect breeding ground for little nasty things like, say botulism (yeah, really). The nitrites and nitrates in curing salt help prevent this. That’s why it’s important to use a curing salt (something with sodium nitrite and sodium nitrate in it) and not just regular table salt, kosher salt, sea salt, etc.
