Bacon 3 Ways

blairz212

Decided I would try my hand at making home made bacon. A guy at work brought some in and I was blown away at how delicious it was and knew it was something I had to try making.

After searching the forum for tips and recipes I decided to try three different cure recipes and purchased an A-maze-N smoker from amazon to cold smoke it prior to slicing.

Here are links to the cure recipes as well as just some good general bacon making info. If you love bacon like i do you will enjoy these reads.

https://amazingribs.com/tested-recipes/pork-recipes/how-make-smoked-bacon-home

https://ilovemeat.com/homemade-bacon-part-1-cure/

I made the maple and Asian recipe from the first link and scaled the recipe in the second link for a 3 pound slab of belly.

i started with a 9-10 pound belly from Costco after trimming and cutting into thirds I was left with 3 three pound hunks. I find it easier to lay out a tape measure to cut the belly into thirds so they’re as close to 3 pounds each.

each hunk went into a 1 gallon freezer ziplock with the curing ingredients. They went into fridge on a cookie sheet lined with paper towels Incase of any leaks. I massaged and flipped each bag every day. The dry cure formed up and was ready in about 3 days or so. The wet cures took about a week. Once done I rinsed each hunk and sliced off one piece and fried it up to test salinity. The wet cures were right on point. The dry cure was super salty so I put it in a pan with water and put it in the fridge changing the water every hour. After four hours it had lost the excessive saltiness and was good to go.

i places each piece of meat on a wire rack and put in the fridge overnight to dry out and form a nice tacky pellicle. Then they went on the egg with the A-maze-N smoker going for four hours. Outdoor temp was around 50 and my temp gauge never moved above 50. It was pretty windy so I kept the bottom vent about an inch open and had the daisy holes on top open. This seemed to produce a nice level of smoke without igniting the pellets in the A-maze-N smoker tray. After four hours of smoke I pulled the meat and wrapped in foil and put in the fridge overnight to firm up. The next day I threw the foil wrapped meat in the freezer for an hour to help making slicing easier. Then strip by strip I hand sliced all the bacon while wiping the drool from my chin. I then put 10-12 strips each into a vacuum bag and into the freezer for later consumption.

Needless to say we had amazing BLTs for dinner and I already have another belly in some cure.

Our favorite was the maple recipe followed by the dry cure recipe. We really didn’t care for the Asian recipe as it was just a little too strong for what we like. It will make great presents for friends and family who don’t know any better :)

this is incredibly easy I suggest everyone try it. The only tough part is slicing it by hand and packaging and it takes me about an hour and a half but it is totally worth it. I am now searching craigslist for meat slicers lol

lkapigian

Great Job! Homemade bacon far surpasses store bought

smokingal

Nice work. Meat slicers definitely help with this stuff, even if they can be a pain to clean.

NorthPilot06

Ahh. That’s the benefit to cold-smoking.

I hot smoke my bacon (same maple recipe that you made) to 145 prior to cooling and slicing - but the result is that I eat lots...and lots...of bacon while slicing =)

PBandJ

Love the homemade bacon. Only thing I do different is smoke for 10 hours.

marysvilleksegghead

Great post! One of these days I'm going to work up the intestinal fortitude to try this!