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- Salt, sugar, chili, shallot, garlic, thyme, peppercorns
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- Add half the water you will need, bring to boil and simmer till salt and sugar have fully dissolved
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- Add ice to thin out the strong brine and will also cool it down fully
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- Skin on Pork Belly
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- Add belly to a non reactive container
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- Cover with ice brine, refrigerate for 8 days
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- After the 8 day brine
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- Remove from brine and lightly rinse
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- Discard the brine
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- Perforated pan with a rack
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- Smoking chips in a foil trey
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- Lay the bacon on the rack while you start your smoking chips
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- Place the pan with the chips on a burner turn on high or start with a blow torch
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- Turn down the burner once the chips have started to smolder
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- Once the chips are burning but not on fire add the belly and keep the burner on low
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- Cover with a pan and let it smoke for 20 minutes on low
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- Keep smoking for 20 or 30 minutes more
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- Perfect
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- Remove smoked belly and transfer to a rack on a sheet trey
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- Cook at 285 f for 30-40 minutes or till cooked through
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- Nice
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- Hang belly in fridge for 24 hours to let all flavors melt together and settle
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- Bacon slab cut in half
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- Remove skin and save
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- Remove all fat, skin, scraps and then slice while very cold
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- Skin and scraps are great for pork and chili braised tomato sauce
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- Save fat for all the great things in life.
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I really appreciate these step by step accounts of your processes. It looks fantastic!
I have cured and smoked my own bacon several times at home. The biggest problem is that I am unable to slice it evenly. As a result, it doesn’t cook up very evenly and is difficult to crisp uniformly. Do you have any suggestions on how to slice bacon without a deli slicer?
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Make sure your bacon is cooked threw, really cold and you have a meat carving knife that is longer then the slice you plan on cutting. While you are slicing your bacon try to slice with one movement instead of a sawing motion. I have a home deli slicer that I bought online for around a 100$ and it works just fine. Good luck, thanks for the support and the good question.
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wow. fantastic. a for effort. i’m having a five course iron chef-style bacon smackdown next week and i only wish i had enough time to do this whole process. looks awesome!
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Y’all,
For $100 the ‘Chef’s Choice’ slicer works great… sure wish I had a Hobart, but thats some big bux.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0002AKCOC
BTW, great stuff Ryan…
J.
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Hi Ryan,
I want to follow these procedures step-by-step. It looks like it would be an awesome project! My only question is, can you provide me with the proportions for your brine?
Thanks,
Deo
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Here you go-
4 cp. sugar
6 cp. salt
24 juniper berry
24 clove
Handful of black pepper
8 qt. water
2 cp. birds eye chili
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