Home made bacon

It's fairly hard to go wrong with what you're using. I pepper my bacon after smoking and slicing as the pepper goes everywhere on my Hobart slicer.

rexster314 said:

It's fairly hard to go wrong with what you're using. I pepper my bacon after smoking and slicing as the pepper goes everywhere on my Hobart slicer.

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I do this as well. I don't do a lot of pepper bacon (although I do like it) but it goes everywhere if you put a heavy crust on it then throw it on the slicer. I did a couple pastrami that was the same as well, coriander and pepper flying everywhere.

Have you tried any herb bacon? Throw some rosemary, thyme, or both (if you like sage, go easy on it, it can overwhelm) in with your cure and minus the sugar and you will get a savory bacon that goes great in more hearty dishes like carbonara. Or if you want to get really nuts and you live in an area of the country that gets cold enough in the winter make pancheta. It's super easy and you can hang it in your unfinished basement as long as its cool enough....and after a month that stuff is funky in a good way.

Your cure sounds right. Try one without the sugar, or less sugar.

Like Legendaryhog said.... try some different herbs.
I do at least one batch per year with crushed juniper berries.

In my experience, the finer your spices are crushed, the less they get flung on the slicer.

I've used heavier smokes, too... they work, but the fruit woods are the way to go.

I've been doing pastromi for some time using Tender Quick as my curing so reduce the sugar and salt a bit from the recipe. I've not had much issue with the pepper and coriander but have a smaller cutting blade on my small home version slicer. I make sure it's room temp before slicing.

Really want to do bacon but haven't run into any belly. Guess I'm going to have to order it.

Is there any significant prep you do prior to curing?

Sausage Warrior... All I do is square mine off, use the trim in sausage.

I make sure to remove the nipples. They're chewy. Too chewy. Too chewy for breakfast.

Found that out the hard way.

Looking for a change from my usual flavours, the last time I made bacon I grabbed one of my current favourite commercial rubs, KC Touch of Cherry, and then added the appropriate amount of curing salt (for the weight of the belly) to it, rubbed it all over, then left it for five days before smoking with apple wood.







It came out really nice, my brother said it was the best bacon he'd ever tasted!

The maple/brown sugar bacon recipe you'll find on Amazing Ribs website is the recipe i've used the most and it is really nice. I've been know to leave it brine for up to ten days for the most flavoursome outcome.

With hundreds, if not thousands, of commercial rubs available you'll probably never run out of new flavours to try!