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Homemade Bacon

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Nate:
so here is the recipe / instructions that I am using for my first time EVER making homemade bacon. 

For a 10lb belly (scale this by weight), prepare a cure mixture of:

10g pink salt (instacure #1)
66g salt
33g sugar
125g brown sugar

Mix well.

Set aside a container with 1/4 cup of molasses.

Put the belly in your curing bag skin side down. Apply the cure mixture fairly evenly to the topside, then pour the molasses over top. The molasses just gets swirled around the top -- do not worry if it is not particularly evenly spread.

Squeeze the excess air out of the bag and seal. I the bag is oversized fold the top over to create a package the size of the belly. Put this in your refrigerator.

Each day for 7 days:

Take the bag out of the refrigerator and turn it every which way so all of the edges of the belly are "wetted" by the brine. Put it back in the fridge flipped with the opposite side up this time.

On the last day, take the belly out of the bag and wash it with water. If you do not wash everything off, it will end up too salty. I've not needed to "soak" my bacon. Washing seems to be enough for me.

Pat dry with paper towels.

I put it in the refrigerator on a rack for an hour or two at this point.

Pre-smoke, I take just a tiny bit of brown sugar (1 or 2 tablespoons for a 10lb belly) and gently drop it on top of the belly trying to be as uniform as I can. Then I go over the whole top with maybe twice that much fresh ground pepper.

I dump maybe 1/2 a chimney of coals into my XL BGE and throw in some peachwood chunks. I get that thing smoking and put the belly in the smoker --cold-- the smoker is cold. I do not let it warm up before putting in the belly.

I let the BGE come up very gradually to 200F and leave it there until the belly is 150F at the core.

After it comes off the smoker, if it has skin I trim it while things are still warm. It is much easier to do it then.

Once things cool a bit, I wrap the bacon in plastic wrap and put it in the refrigerator overnight. It needs to be COLD to slice.


The next day, I pull out the slicer and slice it, relatively thick.

I changed 2 things, 1. I got an already trimmed pork belly (no skin) and 2. I used the shallow hotel pan you see in the picture and used a few paper clamps to ensure that it stays closed (I hate wasting money on foil pans and zip lock bags when not necessary).


here is the thread that I got the information from:  http://www.bbq-brethren.com/forum/showthread.php?t=219608


and as this progresses, I will update with pics and how its going.

day 1:

BobbyB:
Nice.

Nate:
here it is turned for the second time at day 3!

BobbyB:
So...bacon yes? Soon? You ate it already?

Nate:
the cook/smoke has begun!  rinsed, rubbed with brown sugar/fresh ground pepper, temp probe in and on the smoker all by 0630 mountain time!

more pics will come as the smoke progresses!

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