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Sunshine State Canadian Bacon

Our Nicky
Our Nicky Posts: 44
edited November -1 in EggHead Forum
At the Sunshine State Eggfest, in addition to empanadas with chimichurri (see earlier posts) my son and grandson and I served Canadian bacon on buns dressed with homemade aioli on one half of the bun and homemade hot sauce on the other.

We served 120 buns in an hour and a half. That consumed something less than two whole cured loins.

Here's the recipe I used for curing the Canadian bacon (back bacon - if you happen to be Canadian)and a few words about curing generally.

You can cure wet by soaking in brine or dry by just rubbing with cure.

Cure is about 99% salt usually with about 1% sodium nitrate and sodium nitrite combined with varying amounts of spices and sugar. You can cure without nitrates/nitrites, prosciutto, for example,is cured just with salt but botulism is not forgiving and if you want to cure without nitrates/nitrites you have to be really careful to maintain adequately low temperatures - no more than 3 degrees Celsius throughout the curing time until the meat is smoked.

I used Hi-Mountain cure from Wyoming courtesy of Weekend Warrior in whose debt I remain for the idea of curing bacon in the first place.

A pound of cure does about 25 pounds of meat.

Buy a pork loin about three - four inches thick and as long as it comes. If you can one from a get a home raised hog or even find an unseasoned loin so much the better. Most loins I find these days at the grocery store are pre seasoned, but they work too.

Go to Walmart and find a $2 rectangular plastic tub with a lid. It needs to be large enough to hold the loin and small enough to fit in your refrigerator.

Trim the loin of any fat you don't want to eat and rub it with cure at a rate of 1 pound of cure for each 25 pounds of meat. Set the rubbed loin in the tub, cover and place in the refrigerator for at least 10 days turning after the 5th day. The cure will have disappeared after the fifth day, there will be liquid in the bottom of the tub and the meat will have a pinkish hue. All is normal. Some people pour the liquid off. I don't bother until the curing is done. The pink colour of bacon is attributable to the nitrates/nitrites. If you cure without them the bacon is more the colour of pork - which of course, it is.

The thicker the meat the longer curing is required. Weekend Warrior tells me that cure works its way into meat at a rate of approximately a quarter of an inch a day. I have cured thicker loins for two weeks - in which case turn the loin at the seventh day.

At the end of the curing time remove and rinse the loin and soak in cold water for two hours. The less you soak it the saltier it will be. I have soaked for times between 1 and 2 1/2 hours. If you soak less you can always soak again after smoking but it's hard to go the other way. Try two hours for the first time.

You can also cure other cuts in the same way. Weekend Warrior makes awesome buckboard bacon from butt. That's what really got me started.

Set up the Egg for direct cooking and add presoaked smoking wood chunks when well alight. I use cherry and or apple. If you are using native wood from fruit trees from a producing orchard check if they have been sprayed with anything you'd prefer not to eat. Most hardwwods can be used for smoking. Some, like oak, leave a more pungent smokiness. Fruit or nut wood is probably most commonly used.

Remove the loin from the soaking water. You can smoke it naked or add your favouite rub. For the Sunshine State eggfest I rubbed the loin with Worcestershire sauce, cheap yellow mustard and a rub one of my kids sent me for Christmas. As the loin is already well flavoured, rub is like a bit of icing on the cake. Don't overdo it.

Keep the Egg below 250F and smoke the loin until the internal temperature reaches 150F. Meat absorbs smoke flavour more effectively at lower temperatures. Shut down the Egg and remove the loin to a cool place. Leave it on the Egg for an hour or so if you want a smokier flavour, although the longer you leave it the dryer it will be. I take mine off at 150F.

Allow the now smoked Canadian Bacon to cool. You can chill, slice and vacuum pack it, (having a deli slicer really helps but it tastes as good sliced by hand)leave it whole and slice it as required. You can slice it thick or thin or dice it for adding to things like chili.

To cook the bacon - and it still needs cooking - just slap slices on a 350 - 400F Egg direct for a couple of minutes a side for say 1/8"slices, or more, depending on how well you prefer your bacon cooked.

At the Sunshine State Eggfest I served it on toasted dinner rolls spread with aioli and hot sauce. I'll post the recipes for the aioli and the hot sauce in future posts.

Happy curing

Comments

  • Thank you for the kind words and another excellent "How To" recipe post. You've come a long way in 6 months. ;) haha

    Mark
  • Our Nicky
    Our Nicky Posts: 44
    Hey Mark, I mean those words - if it hadn't been for you I wouldn't be curing bacon and that bacon you gave me - well the taste still lingers! You're the man!

    Thanks for the edit - Since I started doing sous vide cooking for some reason I'm using celsius temperature settings and somehow an F that should have been a C crept in.

    Great to see you in FL. I was hoping to do Waldorf this year but we are taking a cruise to Europe for Sandra's birthday.
  • Capt Frank
    Capt Frank Posts: 2,578
    Thanks for the detailed posting, your Canadian bacon was one of my favorite dishes at the fest. Now I can't wait to try it :) .

    Capt Frank
    Homosassa, FL
  • Our Nicky
    Our Nicky Posts: 44
    Thanks Capt. I just did four slabs of home grown pork bellies today for Easter. Got them from my barber whose neighbour just killed a pig. I'll probably do another couple of loins tomorrow.

    Having gotten started curing, I don't know why more people don't cure their own stuff. It's really not hard.

    At $50+ a pound for the good stuff, I'm going to try my hand at prosciutto but I'd like to get a leg from a home raised hog. I guess I'll have to go get my hair cut some more!