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Roo-B-Q'N
01-05-2008, 12:13 PM
I recently cured and smoked my second batch of bacon using pork belly and the instructions from the book Charcutiere.

My problem is every time I go to fry the bacon it starts out looking great but then goes black. It looks burned, but does not taste at all burned. The first time I thought I did not rinse the cure off properly so paid attention to this the last time around. But the same thing happend.

What have I been doing wrong? What causes this to happen? Any help would be appreciated.

jgh1204
01-05-2008, 12:24 PM
How much sugar are you using? Sounds like sugar burning.

CajunSmoker
01-05-2008, 02:42 PM
I'm not familiar with the method you listed but it sounds like a sugar problem to me too. I use a mix of 50/50 light brown sugar to kosher salt with 1/4tsp per pound of meat of Prague #1 cure. Cure for 7 days flipping over every couple of days and remixing juices to make sure the meat is cured. Then rinse for several hours (I'm doing 4 hours with 2 - 3 water changes) before smoking. Never had a problem with the meat turning black.

Roo-B-Q'N
01-05-2008, 03:18 PM
The cure called for 1 pound kosher salt, 13 ounces dextrose and 3 ounces pink salt.

I combined all ingredients and then rubbed some on all surfaces of the pork belly. Placed in ziploc bags and turned and massaged daily for ten days. Once done I rinsed.

I am thinking, that if you are saoking for 4 hours than I did not rinse well enough. But saying that, the second batch is not as "bacony" enough. Thought that was due to rinsing, but now I am thinking it wasn't cured enough. If that is the case is it hazerdous to eat?

CajunSmoker
01-05-2008, 03:35 PM
I've never used dextrose. 3 ounces of cure sounds like an awful lot to me. I'm not sure if the "pink salt" is the same thing as the Prague #1 or not, but the instructions on the Prague box is pretty clear.

http://img98.imageshack.us/img98/2918/img0358xb5.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

Sorry about the blurry pic but to get close enough to read the jar it gets blurry.:roll:
I'm thinking that the dextrose may be what is turning the meat black though.