Bacon - 201 pounds worth - pr0n

Last night we smoked up the last 100 pounds, it was a long night of smoking, slicing and sealing up side after side.

We took a number of pictures, I'll get them off the camera tonight and posted an update.

My entire kitchen/living room and garage still smelled like heaven this morning. :becky:

Ok next round of pictures. We sliced and sealed up the last 5 sides tonight, project "Makin' Bacon" is over and the freezers are full.

On to the pictures!




Bear with me on the lighting on some of these. My kitchen after dark is less than ideal for taking pictures.













Bacon steaks anyone?







Figuring out how to put together the new camp chair while round two is smoking




Bacon mountain!







Fried some up tonight and made me a bacon, egg and cheese sammich. It was delicious!

Thermal Mass - all of the different flavor profiles ended up tasting pretty good but there are a few that I really liked.

- Honey habanero (as long as you don't get carried away with the habanero dust)
- Rulhman's pancetta blend - this was one of my favorites. It makes for a really nice savory flavor profile
- Brown sugar habenaro
- and one of my standby's is brown sugar & cracked peppercorns (simple and delicious)

Few other notes...

Fresh maple syrup add a lot of sweetness to the bacon but you don't get the maple flavor.

It takes a ton of jalapeno dust to get any of the flavor of the pepper.

The only one that was a little disappointing was the sriracha & hot pepper blend. not that it tasted bad, just very lacking in the sriracha and heat department.



bigzthamoose - yep these were cured for 7 days. Here is the basic dry cure that I use.

450 grams of pickling salt
225 grams of granulated sugar
68 grams of pink salt (prague powder #1)

This will make roughly 3 1/2 cups of cure. Use a stand mixer (if you have one) or a whisk to get all the ingredients mixed together and then I use a ratio of 1 tablespoon per pound of meat. With this cure, I've never had it turn out too salty or even had to do a fresh water soak. It works perfectly for my tastes.

I store the extra cure in a mason jar.


Fat Woody's right on with getting a kitchen scale and if things do end up too salty, a fresh water soak will help to remove the salt and make it edible again. My first batch I used a brine and forgot the fresh water soak...it was the saltiest thing I've ever ate...:becky: