Mmmmm… Bacon
-
-
Salt, sugar, chili, shallot, garlic, thyme, peppercorns
-
-
Add half the water you will need, bring to boil and simmer till salt and sugar have fully dissolved
-
-
Add ice to thin out the strong brine and will also cool it down fully
-
-
Skin on Pork Belly
-
-
Add belly to a non reactive container
-
-
Cover with ice brine, refrigerate for 8 days
-
-
After the 8 day brine
-
-
Remove from brine and lightly rinse
-
-
Discard the brine
-
-
Perforated pan with a rack
-
-
Smoking chips in a foil trey
-
-
Lay the bacon on the rack while you start your smoking chips
-
-
Place the pan with the chips on a burner turn on high or start with a blow torch
-
-
Turn down the burner once the chips have started to smolder
-
-
Once the chips are burning but not on fire add the belly and keep the burner on low
-
-
Cover with a pan and let it smoke for 20 minutes on low
-
-
Keep smoking for 20 or 30 minutes more
-
-
Perfect
-
-
Remove smoked belly and transfer to a rack on a sheet trey
-
-
Cook at 285 f for 30-40 minutes or till cooked through
-
-
Nice
-
-
Hang belly in fridge for 24 hours to let all flavors melt together and settle
-
-
Bacon slab cut in half
-
-
Remove skin and save
-
-
Remove all fat, skin, scraps and then slice while very cold
-
-
Skin and scraps are great for pork and chili braised tomato sauce
-
-
Save fat for all the great things in life.
This entry was posted in
Charcuterie,
Good Shit,
Technique and tagged
bacon,
belly,
brine,
pork,
smoke. Bookmark the
permalink.
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?
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.
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!
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.
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
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
Don’t fret the slicing. Just bring the finished slab to your butcher, and he’ll probably do it for free. If not, let him have few pieces, and that should be payment enough!
OK – tried it and have some comments:
1. WAY too salty after a 6-day brining, and I used less than listed above. Will cut down to about 1.5 C next time.
2. Will add more sugar.
3. Skipped the oven baking, and just left it in the smoker longer.
4. Noticed that some ingredients listed at the top (shallot, garlic, thyme) differed from those listed on July 11th (juniper berry, clove), but determined that except for the salt, most other flaveors were not critical on amount or composition.