Buckboard Bacon w/ Pr0n (First Time)

This is my first time making any bacon ever, let alone buckboard bacon. It rivals the $5 per pound pork belly bacon I get at the store--the smoke flavor is incredible and REAL (not liquid smoke injections). I'll never buy store bought pork belly bacon again, instead opting for this $1.39/lb pork butt bacon--it's not only less expensive but tastes sooo good!





Btw, it only cost me pennies to cure this as I used YetiDave's rub recipe:
3% salt, %1 sugar, .25% cure #1 powder (percentages of the weight of the meat). I make up a big 1 quart jar of the rub which will last me for at least a dozen butts--yet only using about 50 cents worth of cure #1 for the entire jar (so just pennies per buckboard bacon butt).

I printed a label for my jar in honor of YetiDave's recipe and help



YetiDave's been really helpful coaching me through this dry rub curing process over the past 11 days--thank you so much Dave!

Note: Btw, YetiDave doesn't keep a jar of this rub, he weighs each ingredient each time -- the salt, sugar and cure #1. I am under the assumption that it's ok to do what I did with the jar, that the cure #1 has no problem mingling with sugar on the shelf for extended periods of time.. perhaps a scientist should clarify this for me thanks

daninnewjersey said:

Could you please share a little more on the process? I'd very much like to try this myself....

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Sure!

I got most of the following from YetiDave and others here on Brethren. Also, from youtube videos, web pages and the Charcuterie book. I also improvised a bit :

Just weigh the meat in grams on your digital kitchen scale. (If you don't have a digital kitchen scale, Escali is a good affordable brand--check out reviews on Amazon; it's the one I have.)

Take the weight of the meat and times it by .0425 (4.25%) to get the grams of rub to use on it. [The rub consists of 3 parts non-iodized salt (e.g. pickling salt), 1 part brown sugar and 1/4 part cure #1.] These can be weighed out individually at (3%, 1% and .25% respectively) if you don't have or want to use a jar of premade curing rub--but mix well before applying.

Put the meat in a zip lock bag and rub it down inside that bag with all the rub. Make sure all the rub goes into the bag and stays there and that it is evenly distributed and in every nook and cranny.

Cure in fridge between 7-14 days depending on thickness of pork cut. My fridge runs at 38F. I heard it should be 40F or lower for this. I had to adjust it to its coldest setting.

Flip each day, massaging the meat each time from the exterior of the bag.

When cured, take out and give it a quick rinse and pat dry. (No need to soak the meat to get the salt out because we carefully weighed everything so it should have the perfect amount of salinity, sugar and cure.)

Then let it air out in the fridge overnight or for 24 hours to form a pedicle. In this past case I experimented and put the meat on a cooling rack, and held up a box fan over it using 4 tomato cans--blowing air on each side for about 1 hour (2 hours total). I did throw it back in the fridge after this. I am guessing it is important that it is cold when you throw it on the smoker as I'd think it would absorb more smoke flavor this way--not 100% though.

Smoke at 200F until an internal temp of 140F; I read smoking to 140F instead of 150F makes the pork more juicy.

Take out of the BBQ pit and wrap in foil and let cool down a little bit then throw in the fridge overnight. Slice and fry the next day or wait a couple days for it to distribute the smoke flavor more--I couldn't wait.. I waited like 1 hour in the fridge before slicing lol.

That's about it!

CarolinaQue said:

Very good looking bacon!!! Now you're hooked!!! I do have a question though, how did you get it that shape? Did you cut the butt in half, or did you use a boneless one and weigh it down to flatten it?

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First I took about a 9 pound butt and cut off a 1/3rd of it (the bone side) making it 6.2 LB. (I used the bone side for a small 3 LB roast later for BBQ'd Puerco Pibil.) Then I cut it horizontally in half to make it more like the size of pork belly.

Then after I smoked it, I took each of those pieces and cut it in half for the photo.

Frying up some for breakfast now:



Note: OMG this was so delicious! "Can you smell THAT?!" Lol, JK! Btw, it tasted NOTHING like Ham only BACON! I was worried before I made it, because I've read that some people thought the buckboard bacon tasted like ham, but mine certainly did not. Pork belly is OVERRATED [Of course, this is the more fattier portion of the butt, so not a totally fair comparison. I might just use this portion of the butt for buckboard bacon in the future and grind up the rest of the butt for sausages with added fat trimmings.]

EDIT: I need a long slicer knife or meat slicer so I can get long strips. Right now I have to cut the chunk of meat in half to slice, 8" chef's knife.