CL find & BACON - mucho PrOn

[Uncle JJ]

I just completed my first try at home-cured bacon, and I made a sweet find on CL. All Pix below. First, the find - a big honkin' slicer for $250! Purrs like a kitten.

So, I bought almost 20 pounds of pork belly. Half is expensive Berkshire pork from a local farmer, and half is from Whole Foods. I couldn't find TenderQuick, so I used Cure#1 in a ratio I found (Ruhlman, I think). I divided the bellies and tried different flavors. I did pepper, plain, brown sugar & pepper, maple & bourbon, and brown sugar & Habanero Death Dust. I cured them in ziplocs in the fridge for 10 days, turning & agitating daily.

Took them out after 10 days, rinsed. I fired up the Shirley with some apple wood. Gotta thank TQ again - the warming box was perfect for this job. (he put in a damper that allows smoke into the chamber from the main smoker). It smoked for about 5 1/2 hours at 150-175*.

Once off the pit, I put in the fridge for a few days. Wondering how I was going to slice all of this meat, I did a quick CL search. Found the Anvil SLR7012, and went out and bought the thing. It is fun to use (and in excellent shape)!

My daughter and I sliced all of the bacon, and fried up a piece of each to try. I found some pieces to be too salty - I think the cure I made causes inconsistency, and I will use Tender Quick next time. Or maybe I should've only cured for 7 days...? The maple bourbon was the crowd favorite. The Hab Death Dust was disappointing, as I must not have used enough of it - not spicy at all. Next time, I'll add some more before smoking. Also, I could tell the difference between the Berkshire and the other, but I don't think it was worth the extra dough (FWIW).

All-in-all, I'm really psyched at the final product. I came on this site and started smoking this past summer. And thanks to all of you, I'm now making home-cured bacon! Really unbelievable. You guys are the best! Enjoy the pRoN:

 

[sliding_billy]

Congrats on the new slicer. It looks like a nice unit. Bacon looks great too.

 

[Shagdog]

Looks great! Nice score on the slicer, I've been looking for one of those on Craigslist for a long time...

It wasn't the pink salt/vs tenderquick that got ya too salty.. It was probably Ruhlman's cure.. I (and many others on here) have found it to be too salty. Next time, fry a test piece when you pull it out of the cure, before you dry it and smoke it. If its too salty, soak it in cold water for a couple hours. Try another piece. Too salty? Soak again. Do that until you get it where you like it. Should help you get the salt under control.

I've been trying to get a spicy bacon for a while, even cured some slathered in sriracha. Doesn't seem to take on a lot of the hot and spicy flavor. I found that putting a good coat of pepper or a hot rub like Habanero death dust on the bacon before you dry the bacon in the fridge (develop the pellicle) helps add a little kick and the rub will stick to the outside of the bacon very well.

 

[YetiDave]

You can avoid any risk of over-salting if you follow equilibrium curing - calculated salt, sugar and nitrite content. Basically weigh the meat and make a cure consisting of 3% of the weight in salt, 1% of the weight in sugar and 0.25% of the weight in cure #1. Then you can leave it curing as long as you like, it really won't make any difference as the idea is that the meat absorbs all of the cure, rather than just enough. That way you don't have to soak, so the final product won't be sopping wet and you won't end up soaking out all of the flavour of the seasoning

 

[Uncle JJ]

Thanks, guys, good info!

 

[bbqwilly]

I'll take a pack of that

 

[Pyle's BBQ]

You can avoid any risk of over-salting if you follow equilibrium curing - calculated salt, sugar and nitrite content. Basically weigh the meat and make a cure consisting of 3% of the weight in salt, 1% of the weight in sugar and 0.25% of the weight in cure #1. Then you can leave it curing as long as you like, it really won't make any difference as the idea is that the meat absorbs all of the cure, rather than just enough. That way you don't have to soak, so the final product won't be sopping wet and you won't end up soaking out all of the flavour of the seasoning

Are you saying that the 3%, 1% and 0.25% should be of the weight of the meat? And are all the ingredients weighed?

 

[Big George's BBQ]

Congrats on your new addition Bacon looks Great

 

[YetiDave]

Are you saying that the 3%, 1% and 0.25% should be of the weight of the meat? And are all the ingredients weighed?

Yeah that's right, so for 1000g of meat (it's easier to work in metric, imho) you want 30g of salt, 10g of sugar and 2.5g of cure #1. Salt-wise you can go for anything between 2.5 and 3.5% and I'm sure if you wanted a sweeter cure you could bump up the sugar. This just a pretty good formula I discovered after doing a ton of research and after several way too salty batches of bacon

 

[Tonybel]

Bacon looks great.

 

[MisterChrister]

Well done!

 

[cowgirl]

Looks mighty fine from here Uncle JJ... Nice job! :thumb:

 

[BASSER]

Very impressive, looks awesome.