1st Attempt: Canadian Bacon

HoustonEgger

Partly because pork loin was on sale and partly because I wanted to try a recipe from Ruhlman's Charcuterie cookbook, I spent time last week and over the weekend making some Canadian Bacon.

Ingredients:

• 1 gallon water
• 1-1/4 cups Kosher salt
  
• 3 tablespoons pink salt (6.25% sodium nitrite curing salt) - ordered mine on Amazon
  
• ½ cup sugar
• 4 garlic cloves, peeled and rough chopped
• 4 fresh or dried bay leaves
• 1 3.5-4lb pork loin, fat trimmed
  

Directions:

1. Combine the brine ingredients in a pot and bring it to a simmer, stirring to dissolve the salt and sugar. Remove it from the heat, allow it to cool, then chill it in the refrigerator.
2. Submerge the pork loin in the brine (or put it all in a large zip top bag) and refrigerate for 72 hours (give or take a few hours depending on your schedule). I used a plate to weigh the loin down - don't forget that it needs to be completely submerged
   
3. Remove the loin from the brine, rinse it, pat it dry, and refrigerate it uncovered for 4 hours or up to a day (in the fridge)
   
4. Then hot smoke the loin to an internal temperature of 145 to 150 degrees F. - I did this with the egg at 250, using apple wood chips & chunks
5. Then let it cool and slice as desired - i sliced mine and put most into the freezer in individual packages for future usage. Also chopped some up for use in twice baked potatoes (yum!)

Overall - now that I've done this once, I'm going to experiment with the recipe a bit more and try new flavors, but this will be a regular at our house whenever pork loins are on sale for sure!

Thatgrimguy

Awesome job!  Does it taste like ham?  Looks like ham.   One thing I have definitely learned since getting bit by the BBQ bug is that Charcuterie is awesome.