First time makin' bacon

[Hernlem]

I've cured other meats before but never tried making bacon ... until now. I started with a few pounds of fresh pork belly and added curing salt, kosher salt and brown sugar to 156 ppm nitrite, 2.5% salt and 2% sugar by weight and vacuum sealed the meat with the additives. Meat was cured for a week in the refrigerator and then rinse and set on a rack in the fridge overnight to dry. The next day I smoked the cured pork belly in my UDS, monitoring the internal temperature. After 5 hours of smoking, the internal temps were only a bit over 140F in the thickest parts although my probe and dial thermometers were showing drum temps up to 210F (most of the smoke was a slow climb to that level). I finished the bacon to 154F in the oven (sun was going down).


Charcoal was mix of partially burned lump and briquettes and oak wine barrel stave pieces with fresh Kingsford apple wood briquettes and hickory chunks. I also put a smoke tube filled with hickory pellets in the drum but that went out early on. This was only my second time using the smoke tube. The first time was with all intakes on the drum wide open. Temp in that case peaked at 2.5 hours at 135F. Evidently it doesn't like the well damped conditions that I use to control the burn rate of the charcoal basket.

 

[Stingerhook]

Looks good to me.

 

[BBQ Bacon]

Looks better than my first attempt!

 

[Fayborg]

Great job, nice score on the pork belly. Jealous, I can never find any that look that good. Congrats on your bacon

 

[scp]

Looks more like side meat than belly...I too wish I could find um like that.

 

[jzadski]

I almost pulled the trigger on a some nice looking pork belly at Costco. Now I am really regretting it. looks good!

 

[Hernlem]

Great job, nice score on the pork belly. Jealous, I can never find any that look that good. Congrats on your bacon

We have a few options out here. The cheapest pork bellies that I could find were at a place called Smart Food Services ($2.75/lb) and Costco ($2.99/lb). They come trimmed but are about 10 or more pounds per slab and I thought I'd like to try things on a smaller cut. Also, all that I saw were pretty fatty. Next up were a Chinese and Filipino grocery. Both places have pork belly with the skin on, the latter with some bones, as well. I don't care for the rind so that was not a bonus to me. I went with the Filipino grocery because the price was lower but still about $4/lb but the cuts were in a range more suitable for experimentation; around 3-4 lbs. I chose the meatiest piece I could find and removed the skin and the ribs but left the "flank steak". I got some trimmings off the ribs and saved that for sausage.