OK, curing finished the other day. There was some liquid inside the vac-pack, which I've read is normal. Other than that, it looked pretty much like any other piece of seasoned meat.
I rinsed all the pieces off the best I could.
And packed into my 2 biggest stock pots to soak overnight.
I wanted to make sure the pieces had some space in between, so I ended up sticking some ice cubes in to create voids for the water to contact the meat.
My overnight soak turned into a 2 night soak as I was only able to change the water once during the first night. I got 2 more water changes in over the next day, tho. We'll see if this affects the finished product or not.
After the soak, it was time to make the glaze. I took 4 poblanos and roasted on the stove. Here they are with the skins removed.
I cut them into pieces and added them to a pot of simmering maple syrup.
I simmered the peppers for a half hr. When I tasted it, it just tasted like syrup with green peppers in it- not hot at all. I guess I boiled all the capzaisin away. Oh well, there goes that idea.
Decided to just sprinkle a few of the pieces with cayenne before smoking.
I ended up with 8 large rectangular pieces and one little end piece, so I did 2 pieces hot for the boss and 1 for myself to try. I did the little piece too just to finish off the bottle of cayenne .
I don't have any pictures of them on the smoker because it was such a hectic day, but I'll slicing it up in a little bit and will have a couple of that.
Thanks for lookin!