Mmmmmm Bacon

[pdilley]

Piece of pork belly - couple of tablespoons of honey - 1/2cup salt - rub honey and salt into pork and put in a container in the fridge - turn every two days for 8 days - rinse off and pat dry - hang or place bacon on rack uncovered in the fridge for 24 hrs to dry and form a pellicle on its surface - smoke at about 100C for 5 hrs with a mixture of apple, mesquite and chardonay soaked oak (just a packet from BBQs Galore)

Result - bloody beautiful. Heart attack here I come

View attachment 20175

TB

:icon_drool2:

Did I mention I'm going to start raising my own pigs on the property soon?

Bacon and pork that actually has real taste back in the meat unlike supermarket shiite here I come! :icon_cheers:

Have to have a big pig slaughter party Bacon, sausage fest, spit roasting and leg curing!

Cheers,
Brewer Pete

 

[Sully]

This thread has inspired me to give bacon a go. Here is how I am going about it using the recipe from HERE

Smoked Bacon with Honey Cure

Ingredients
250g Salt
10g Kwikurit
500ml Honey
1 slab Pork Belly
Hickory Wood Chip or Sawdust

METHOD

Mix the salt and Kwikurit together thoroughly and rub into the bacon. Once the rubbing has been completed, pour the honey over the bacon and smother evenly. Wrap the bacon in a plastic bag or sheet and refrigerate at 5C for about 6 days.

Using warm water, wash the excess cure & honey off the bacon. Allow the bacon to dry in room temperate for about 30 minutes. While the bacon is drying, heat up a smokehouse to 60C. Place bacon into the smokehouse after drying and allow the bacon to dry with all dampers open. Close the dampers until about open and apply the smoke. Smoke the bacon until the core temperature reaches 50-55C.

Reduce the temperature of the smoker to 45C and smoke until the desired colour is obtained.

Remove the bacon from the smoker and place in a refrigerator and allow to set overnight before slicing.

Will post some pics when its done.

Cheers

Sully

 

[Sully]

Todays efforts so far...

Have 3.6 kg of ham to smoke as well.

 

[Sully]

And here is the finished product fresh out of the smoker. It is not going to be smokey as hoped because I didn't have the temp up high enough to generate enough smoke, but cant wait to cook it up for brekky in the morning :icon_drool2: .

Cheers

Sully

 

[Thirsty Boy]

Sully, you might already know this, but i have found with the bacon, it really helps to let it air dry a goodly chunk of time before you smoke it. Develops a sticky layer and makes the smoke stick better. Yours looks pretty damn tasty though.

The ham hocks i made turned out pretty well. They were quite lightly cured and very lightly cold smoked. So definitely ham rather than pork.. But only just.

Pics are thumbnails for big photobucket shots. Click for the big photo.

Sealed up in the bag to cure for a week or so


Air drying


Decided to use the BBQ for cold smoking. Hocks up one end and a little holder for the (hickory) chips made from a coke can at the other. No heat apart from the chips themselves.


Quick blast with the benzomatic to get the chips a'smokin


Close the lid and there's smoke a plenty, but the whole BB is nice and cool, the lid barely warm even right over the top of the chip holder. Completely cool to the touch where the pork was. Pop back every 20mins or so to either blow the chips back to life or give them a couple of seconds burst from the gas torch.


Smoked for a total of about 2 hours for a nice light touch.mfor a long cold smoking, this method would be a bit labour intensive - its bloody easy for giving something just a quick lick of smoke though.

Then i just baked em in the oven. Now one is in the freezer and one has just this afternoon been turned into what seems to be shaping up to be a marquee pea and ham soup for dinner.

 

[manticle]

I think I might have a crack at some bacon next weekend.

Looks too good and too easy not to have a go and I do eat a lot of bacon.

 

[kirem]

I'm in!

We can all make bacon at AHB

 

[manticle]

Think I'll make a rub with brown sugar, sea salt and black pepper and smoke with french oak ('cos I have some), oregano, mustard seed and thyme.

 

[Sully]

Think I'll make a rub with brown sugar, sea salt and black pepper and smoke with french oak ('cos I have some), oregano, mustard seed and thyme.

Ha, I just realised I'm not on Facebook after looking for the "Like" button.


But "LIKE"

 

[Tim F]

I made a kilo of turkey bacon yesterday. The cure was a handful of sage leaves and a sprig of rosemary chopped fine, 4 juniper berries and 50g of basic dry cure from the recipe in charcuterie. Sat it in that for a week then hot smoked it over plum wood for a few hours. The plum smoke goes so well with the turkey - sweet/spicey. When I started smoking I didn't know if I believed the type of wood made that huge a difference but it really does.

 

[Mercs Own]

Sully, you might already know this, but i have found with the bacon, it really helps to let it air dry a goodly chunk of time before you smoke it. Develops a sticky layer and makes the smoke stick better. Yours looks pretty damn tasty though.

Yes once you have finished the curing process rinse the meat well then dry with paper towels and put on a wire rack and put in your fridge for at least a couple of hours - over night is better so as to form a really good pellicle - following lifted from the website - lifted from a website:http://www.accidentalsmallholder.net/articles/bacon/drycuring/

"After rinsing, the bacon needs to be dried to allow a pellicle to form on the surface. The pellicle is a layer of protein which serves 3 purposes - it prevents the fat in the meat from rising to the surface and spoiling; it provides a surface to which smoke molecules will cling more effectively; lastly it seals in moisture, preventing the bacon from drying out completely."

 

[Sully]

A bit OT as its not exactly bacon but ham (still Pork ) fresh out of the smoker.

 

[manticle]

Looking good Sully.

Just picked up a few kg of pork belly today. About to make the salt/sugar cure.

 

[Phoney]

I put a 2.5kg slab into the fridge to cure yesterday. Used 1 cup of raw sugar, 1 cup sea salt, couple of tbsp's of back pepper & 1/2 cup of maple syrup. Looking forward to smoking it next weekend!

Just a question; Do you guys slice it with a knife or an electric meat slicer?

 

[Tim F]

it can be hard to slice thin, i didn't have that much luck with our electric slicer but sharp knife worked ok. If you want thin slices it's a bit easier if you par freeze it first just so it stiffens up.

 

[manticle]

Started smoking mine after work today.

Looking forward to a new obsession.

 

[dug]

Got my pork belly today. watched the butcher cut the nipples off, and wondered if people would object to nipples on the bacon... ****s and bacon.

 

[Thirsty Boy]

My pork belly usually comes complete with nipples... When you roast it they make little extra crispy crackling treats! It does feel a tiny bit weird rubbing in the salt and oil though.......

 

[davo4772]

mmmm - the pepper berries are a nice touch Merc

I hot smoked my first couple of batches - and it certainly makes it look fantastic. But it does make it really really super smokey. Delicious if that's what you are looking for.

I have cold smoked a batch or two really lightly, then cooked it in the oven (or left raw and cooked only once at eating time) and that gives a bunch more control for me over the level of smoking. I also find the smoke flavour more delicate and a bit less bushfire effect. I love both - but my wife likes the more delicate version. I use the heavily smoked version as seasoning rather than straight eating bacon.

Recently - I have been curing with a little liquid smoke added, air dry for a day or two... and then you just have to cook it in the oven. Easy as you could possibly ask for and the smoke flavour from the liquid smoke is to my palate, just as good as the mucking about setting bits of wood on fire. I'll still use the smoker every now and again.. but the liquid smoke is really good and sooooo much easier.

i am using nitrites these days - I like the pure salt bacon, but prefer it with the nitrites. Makes it more bacony/hammy and less porky. Plus it gives me an added level of confidence that I'm not going to kill anyone.

I'm using the "Basic Dry Cure" from the book Charcuterie - The craft of Salting, Smoking and Curing. Which in my case amounted to

450g Salt
225g Sugar
50g Cure #1

(gives a nitrite level of 4.3mg/g)

I use this at 22g/kg of pork and it makes for great bacon and ham.. as a matter of fact I am about to go put 2 pork hocks on to cure - they will be ham sandwiches and pea and ham soup in the very near future. I might post pictures if I get enthusiastic.

Hello Thirsty.

Some questions re Liquid smoke. Do you mix the liquid smoke with the cure and for how long do you marinade in the LS.. Also, when you bake the bacon do you bake at low temp ie like a normal hot smoke and for the same time.

Thanks in advance.

Dave

 

[Thirsty Boy]

Hello Thirsty.

Some questions re Liquid smoke. Do you mix the liquid smoke with the cure and for how long do you marinade in the LS.. Also, when you bake the bacon do you bake at low temp ie like a normal hot smoke and for the same time.

Thanks in advance.

Dave

Yep, just put the liquid smoke in with the cure... By the time you rub it all over a lump of pork, the cure is as much paste as powder, the amount of liquid smoke you use hardly makes a difference.

And it stays there for the whole curing time... Say a week or so.

I bake exactly as you suggest, up on a rack in a low oven around the same way i would do if i were hot smoking.

I'm no expert though, still very much learning this stuff and certainly the liquid smoke. Someone will know plenty more about it than me, hopefully they'll chime in.

TB