Buckboard Bacon ~ Injection Cured & Cold Smoked

For the last 15 years, all of my Buckboard bacon.... boneless butt Buckboard, loin Buckboard, and even Buckboarded chops have been dry cured and hot smoked. I started using Hi Mountain cure, then switched to a home-made Tender Quick based cure.

This is my second batch of injection cured (for 12 days), cold smoked (for 11 hours), then finished to 150° making it a ready-to-eat product, but a light frying really wakes up the flavor. The injection is vegetable stock, salt, sugar, black pepper, AmesPhos, and Cure #1. I'm seeing a good improvement in moisture, and a deeper smoky flavor.... almost like cold smoked belly bacon.

I started this smoke at 3:30 am, and the outside temp was 45°. We're socked in with smoke from the California wild fires which blocks the sun and keeps the days cooler than normal. All the vents in the BDS are open, and the lid is blocked open as well to get maximum draft.









For our "sandwich ham" at home we'll buy a couple of pounds of deli ham, or one of the 1/4 size Hormel Cure 81 hams. I like having some ham steaks around for breakfast or as a main meat for dinner. So, it looks like Hormel just lost a customer. :mrgreen: I think this will take it's place from now on.

jham0077 said:

That needs some bread(white of course) a slice of provolone and some spicy mustard. Or a biscuit, some eggs, and maybe grits.

I deboned a butt last Wednesday and put it in a cure hoping for that result. How long did it take to get to 150? And what temp were you running?

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For the cold smoking, the pit temps were 65° to 80°, and the internal reached 75°. Next, I hung them in my Big Chief and ran it at 160° pit temp until the internal was about 100°. Now I'm 13 hours in.... so I used my convection oven at 250° to get the internal to 150°, which took about 90 minutes.

jham0077 said:

Yeah, I think I can manage that. I'll have to see how low the RT will go. I have tube smokers if it won't get that low. The butt is pretty thick, I was gonna let it go for 3-4 weeks in the cure. It's an equilibrium cure so it won't hurt it.
Appreciate that.

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I used the tube with pellets, but you need a large volume smoker and plenty of draft, tubes kick out some smoke, so it needs to flow by the food. You can grind pellets, or mist them with water and let them crumble.... this takes 5 minutes. Then dry in a 200° oven. Mix some pellets into the coarse crumbles and your tube will burn a more gentle smoke. I also have the U-bolt mod on my tubes (the U-bolt is resting on the block of wood) so they sit at a slight angle, this slows the burn down. Check out this video:

https://youtu.be/Vn0wHaGkviw

As long as you have the 33° to 38° fridge temps you should be fine. 14 to 20 days should be no problem, I've never gone longer than 20 days. The rind does have to be trimmed off as it dries the longer you go. This is 14 day cured butt, and it totally mirrors a rear leg ham (and much easier to deal with). It tastes like a ham from a custom smokehouse, not a country ham... but a good city ham that is not mass produced.

Learning to BBQ said:

If you don't mind me asking, what do size of chips do you use in your tube smoker? I have one and I have a devil of a time keeping it lit. I have a bag of fairly small chips but they don't seem to like it. Or do you use pellets? Or does it have to do with how full it is?

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I use pellets, or a mix of pellets and ground pellets. I bet the chips are your problem. I load the tube 3/4 full then shake back and forth so the pellets form a ramp at the mouth of the tube. This seems to work better when they start burning. You want as much draft as you can get, otherwise you risk a bitter flavor. Someday I'm going to try some kind of screen for a lid.

SmokinAussie said:

That's really nice. You sure are the expert here. So many of your threads have inspired me.

Cheers!

B

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Thanks for the kind words.... But honestly most things just take time and attention to detail, and with few exceptions, home curing, canning, sausage making etc., are old methods that have proven themselves time and time again. Cooking meat over live fire and smoke is older than all of those things, we've just figured out how to improve on all of these things. :mrgreen: