Makin Bacon

KenHawk · January 2011

Working my way through the book, Charcuterie, I got around to bacon. I ordered a pork belly from a small butcher. She gets it from a local Minnesota farmer that doesn't mess with a lot of chemicals.

We used Polcyn's cure (with pink salt and other stuff) and let the 4 lb. belly sit for about 2 weeks. It was longer than we intended, maybe too long.

Since I was working out of the house today, I fired up the BGE and smoked one of them today.

I was nervous about using the recipe in the Charcuterie book. He talks about using an oven to hot smoke the slab at 200 degrees F until the meat reaches 150. The stuff would be cooked by then. I kept thinking I should cold smoke it. So, I did.

I used my little stainless steel box with a cheap ($5 at Northern Tool) soldering iron. The wood was a kind of coarse apple sawdust. I’ve tried this before (with salmon and cheese) and it works well. I let the egg preheat (it was 4 degrees outside today) with a small amount of charcoal, extinguished the coals and loaded everything up. The thermometer never budged. The slab smoked for just over 5 hours. For the last 2 or 3, I had a temperature probe in there and the meat never got above 80 F.

We’re supposed to let it sit overnight, but we couldn’t wait. We sliced some and fried it up tonight. The apple smoke was delicious. The meat was tasty. It was too salty (having been in the cure too long), but we can live with it. Polcyn claims you can blanch the bacon before frying it to remove some of the salt. We might try that, but it is really good.

A second slab was cured with the pancetta recipe that follows the bacon cure in the book. It was washed off, peppered, rolled up, and tied. It now hangs in the basement fridge for another 2 weeks of curing. I'm keeping some water in there to keep the humidity up around 60 percent.

As the bacon came off, I loaded up the charcoal, lit it again, and cooked a beautiful salmon filet for dinner. Yes the BGE works right through the middle of winter!

Hoss · January 2011

Glad it worked.I look forward to the pancetta post.

cookn biker · January 2011

Nice! Did you rinse the Polcy's cure off? You did great following your instinct.
Can't wait to hear the outcome of the next cure.
Take pictures.
Thanks for the post.

stike · January 2011

bacon can be hot or cold smoked. taking it to 150 won't hurt a thing, but does firm the texture.

two weeks is too long, but the saltiness can only be as salty as the amount of salt in the rub. how thick was the belly? how much cure did you make? if you made enough for 5 pounds (the rough ratio of his cure) AND went two full weeks, yeah. the cure might be too much.

did you get much smoke at 5 hours? i usually have to go 8-12 hours cold smoking to get real color and smoke, since the cold smoke is generally very mild.

be interesting to hear what you think of the pancetta. i just sliced the last 2-pounds of the stuff i made for christmas. it goes a long way. it's fantastic.

ignore the knuckleheads who look at you funny for drying it at room temp. forgive them, lord, for they don't know nuthin. :laugh:

cookn biker · January 2011

Funny and perfect.

stike · January 2011

funny thing is, you catch yourself sometimes falling back into the paranoid thinking. i mean, i had the thing hanging in open air for two weeks, at roon temp. after i sliced most of it, i still had a big chunk left over. i finally sliced it today, and as i wentto get it from the fridge i wondered briefly "i hope it is still good".

now, someone needs to explain to me why two weeks hanging from a pipe in my basement is ok, but a week in the fridge means it could "go bad". hahaha

before refrigeration, they used to stack hams in a barrel with the dry cure. by the time the train got where it was going, they were cured. high mountain actually mentions the temps are best at i think 45-50. it is perfectly safe, but try telling that to folks you are serving the ham to :laugh:

KenHawk · January 2011

I'll have to get some pictures tomorrow.

I keep moving the soldering around in there to keep the smoke going strong. I wasn't sure how long I should have left it (could have easily kept going). It's interesting to hear you say 8 hours. It doesn't look like the smoke penetrated all the way through.

stike · January 2011

smoke doesn't penetrate. say it with me everyone. smoke doesn't penetrate.
hahaha

cold smoke is much milder, and i find it needs a lot of time to get color.

here's a few hours in

and this was, i think, 8 hours or more

compare it to hot smoked, at just about 4 hours.

Little Chef · January 2011

Ken: The smoke will never penetrate all the way through...ever. You can hot smoke, cold smoke, etc...it's still just going to affect the meats surface, and never inside. Now if you are saying the meat didn't 'cure' all the way through??? After two weeks in cure, I would find that hard to believe. Sounds like you have the results needed, and will be the best bacon ever. Posting above regarding saltiness.

Little Chef · January 2011

Ken: You did a great job trusting your instincts in the smoking process. I have smoked a lot of bacon, and have never relied on an internal temp during the smoking process. I just smoke until it has developed the color and smokiness we like, and I have found even in a hot smoke, I am usually pulling about 120-130*. 150* just seems way to high. Also, the reason Ruhlman/Polcyn recommend resting overnight is so the fat can set back up and chill for easier slicing (I still don't agree with the 150* thing! :blink: ). With a cold smoke, the rest is irrelevant.
As far as the saltiness goes, did you soak the belly before smoking? Most will soak the belly/butt/loin...whatever...to pull some of the excess salt out, especially if overly cured. A few hours in water with a few water changes, then air dried overnight before smoking, you should never have a salt issue again. (Kind of a reverse of the osmosis we use to cure from the beginning...)
Listen to Stike for sure...this guy has done some stuff I can only dream of

...(I have no basement, and Florida sure isn't conducive to air drying, though I have done it with duck prosciutto.) :laugh: :huh:

Boilermaker Ben · January 2011

stike wrote:

now, someone needs to explain to me why two weeks hanging from a pipe in my basement is ok, but a week in the fridge means it could "go bad". hahaha

Probably because you've had meat go bad in the fridge before...uncured, sure, but still...but no history of meat going bad in the basement, I'm guessing...unless unnoticed mousetrap victims count.

I visited my favorite butcher on Monday. They're a ways out of town, and in the wrong direction, so I only get up there a few times per year. I had placed an order for some tri-tips, but completely forgot to ask for pork belly until I was standing there at the counter. They make a lot of bacon, and wind up using all their belly, so they almost never have any raw belly on hand. Sigh. Bacon will have to wait until my next visit. I guess I could order some from the grocery, but I'd wind up with commercial stuff. We've got other butcher options nearby, but they charge an arm and a leg compared to the better small-town butcher I prefer. But one of these days, when I get my act together...

stike · January 2011

when meat goes "bad" in the fridge, it is almost always 'quality', not safety. deli meat doesn't go bad, it gets slimy from fat and water coming to the surface. that's not unsafe to eat, just unpalatable.

while i'm having my second cup of coffee, allow me to wax poetic, and rant a bit. hahaha (this is not toward you, but just springs from the "we have all had meat go bad" comment in your reply.

very very rarely does meat "go bad" in the fridge. people have really conflated two totally separate concepts. 'quality' and 'food safety' are almost independent. yet a drop in quality is equated to being "unsafe".

i heard someone say that somewhere on the we they'd found that a dry aged steak foodsavered was 'safe' for about three days in the fridge.

my question was "why safe for 45 days in the fridge UNWRAPPED, but safe only 3 days in the same fridge, under a vacuum?

it is prudent to be concerned with food safety, but it isn't being 'prudent' when people are making up rules and guessing all the time

i will simply say that i bet ha;f the folks who have thrown out food thinking it was 'unsafe' were incorrect, and that it was merely suffering from quality issues. it's an important distinction. if you throw out meat after a week, why is it the USDA says eggs (a large proportion of which carry salmonella) are still safe up to five weeks AFTER the sell-by date? it's because the egg and meat are no less safe, but the meat looks a whole heckuva lot worse than the egg.

the egg is certainly not as fresh, the yolk is saggy, the albumen a little runny, but still safe, even 6 weeks later (that's the truth). the sell-by for eggs is re: freshness, not safety.

the meat will be drier, waxy, maybe even moldy. none of that is a safety issue. and if the temps are good for the eggs, they are good for the meat.

i know i'm taken as an idiot when i say that, but it is the simple truth. if anything, i am trying to push the pendulum far back in the other direction so that maybe it will stop in the middle. because right now, food safety concerns are blown way out of proportion.

there has never been a question here posted like "i left my spinach out on the counter four hours, is it still safe to eat?" spinach is more likely to make you sick than beef... but how stupid would a question like that sound here?

food safety is a concern, but the fear is greatly out of proportion to the reality

stike · January 2011

i really need to look into the soak out that is often recommended, but which ruhlamn/polcyn skip.

their time in cure for belly is pretty typical, but for their loin bacon (as an example) they seem to go only three days in the pickle. i have seen other recipes calling for 7, 10 days even. followed by a soak out to get the excess salt out.

which leads me to speculate (this is only speculation! :laugh: ):

-if dry curing, the amount ruhlman gives is for 5 pounds of belly cure. if you use a 4 pound belly, you need to use 20% less.

-at the same time, in a pickle, the cure acts very quickly. and since there is a LOT of excess salt in the pickle floating outside the meat, the longer it is in the pickle, the saltier it gets. whereas in a dry cure, if you use the right amounts, the meat can't keep finding more salt (like it does when swimming in the pickle). so it can't get 'saltier' when dry cured. it already took in all the salt.

i think why i have been lucky with bacon being not overly salty is because i realize i am modifying ruhlman and polcyn. i never mentioned this, and i never considered it was important... but i do a salt box cure. because i tend to make a LOT of belly bacon at once, i simply mixed up a lot of premade dry cure (like, two punds of dry cure, no adjunct flavors). then, i drop the belly into the cure, toss it around, and whatever sticks, sticks. then into the ziploc bag to cure, along with the flavorants (sugars, herbs, whatever).

so, i realize i am never in danger of over salting. by doing the box cure (i forget exactly what they call it), i get only what sticks. never in danger of using a batch of cure intended for 5 pounds on a 4 pound belly. in that case, using a 5-pound recipe on 4 pounds, it would be 25% more salt than you want.

even leaving it in the fridge longer than a week means the belly won't overcure. but leaving loin bacon in a pickle too long, or leaving belly in too much cure, that would lead to excessive saltiness
never thought about it before til just now.

Boilermaker Ben · January 2011

I'll agree with you that throwing things out based on date rather than condition is silly, but if it's bad, it's bad, regardless of whether it's bad because it's unsafe, or bad because it's unpalatable. I don't really care whether that three week old pile of shaved deli turkey in the bottom of the fridge is SAFE to eat; I'm still not eating it...it's orange, and it smells like ass. Safety isn't the only criterion.

But all hyperbole aside, I know what you're saying.

stike · January 2011

yeah. and i hope you understand i wasn't saying that i save my deli meat even when it's slimy. haha

just using an extreme example to prove a point. the deli meat thing was an obvious example, because people often think it is unsafe. i agree it isn't anything i want to eat, but the point was to say that meat rarely goes 'bad' (where 'bad'=unsafe) in our fridges.

heck, i'd go so far as to say that if someone thinks their meat is unsafe, and they throw it out, then it means everything in the fridge is unsafe. temps are the concern. so if a roast goes truly bad (unsafe), then the milk, eggs, butter, etc. all needs to go into the trash too.

KenHawk · January 2011

Great discussion!

I, too, have made Kosher dills with the salt only cure. The half sour pickles come out earlier and are less salty. But, I have to be careful with the brine I use. One that is too salty will always deliver salty pickles. There is also a lactobacillic fermentation going on there. There is a sourness that can balance the salt.

I took some pictures to describe what I meant about the smoke penetrating. Sounds like I was all wrong there.

Stike, I did coat the slabs the way you described. Then, I threw each in a bag and tossed the extra cure into the bag. Thanks for mentioning your approach; I'll simply coat and bag next time!

I mentioned I've cold smoked some cheese in the past. Right out of the BGE, it tastes almost sooty it's so smokey. Over the course of the next week, the smoke flavor mellows and gets more complex. Is this a cheese phenomenon or does it happen in smoked meats as well.

Stike, you mentioned most eggs have salmonella. Does this mean I should stop drinking flip cocktails (made with a raw egg white)? I sure do like them!

KenHawk · January 2011

Here is the end we sliced bacon off. You can see the top portion of the meat is darker. This was what i meant by smoke penetration. You can see the meat on the lower part of the slab is not darker, so there goes that theory.

This one is from the other angle.

Here is the underside.

How does a guy know when the cold smoke is done?

stike · January 2011

i was probably too flip in saying most eggs have salmonella. i'm sure i'm wrong about that.

what i should have said is that in the past, salmonella hasn't been virulent enough to cross the barrier from hen to egg, but that now it has. so it is no longer rare for an egg to have salmonella. but i was wrong to imply (or say) that most had it.

yeah, the extra cure in th bag might be the reason it was too salty. also, it might only be the ends. try some from the middle.

i do not mix polcyn's ingredients together. i make the basic dry cure (pink salts mixed with salt). i do the salt-box tossing cure to coat it, and then put it in the ziploc and THEN add sugars. i also probably add more sugar than needed by his recipe (for the sweet). ...and like wise i add more garlic and savory too, if i want a boost in the savory bacon

KenHawk · January 2011

Interesting point.

stike · January 2011

glad you are having fun with it. it's rewarding and pretty cost effective. plus, i like the idea of doing something very traditional and trying to spread it around.

i gave the cured stuff to only a few people who seemed to be interested. some of the families from the kids' school might be a little weirded out to receive bacon "that guy we know only because his kid plays soccer too"...

but there was a woman my wife is friends with... she is from an italian family ( grew up LIVING it, cooking, tradtion, etc.) i asked "would you ever try some home made pancetta? " and she said "my dad used to make it. i love it." i asked how he made it and she said , "hanging from pipes in the basement". :laugh:

her dad passed away suddenly in november, so she really enjoyed getting the pancetta.

that made it worthwhile for me right there

ResQue · January 2011

The chances of you getting salmonella poisoning (Salmonellosis) eating a raw egg is very low. Salmonellla is found (the majority of the time) on the outside of the egg. The only way the salmonella gets into the egg is from an infected hen. You can even even eat an egg that is infected with salmonella as long as it is cooked and it was handled properly(by the factories). The heat kills the strain. I still eat raw eggs and I am not worried at all about it. You are more likely to get salmonellosis from other food products as a direct result of cross contamination.

KenHawk · January 2011

Stike, you mentioned the edge will be saltier. Exactly right. After we got more than inch into cutting it up, the salt level is fine.

Really good bacon, I will be making it again!

Jagermeister, I'm glad to hear it from an MD. I don't eat raw eggs often, and I try to buy them from a source that turns them over every day or two.

I think I'll go make a Vodka flip while I go thhrough my ice fishing gear - the season's officially here.

Makin Bacon

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