Beginner bacon - pork belly

[thirdeye]

Originally Posted by gonefishin

Scotts, You'll absolutely love the product you get by making your own bacon.



I think the only thing I would add to this good advice is a link to a cure calculator. This way you can weigh your meat, enter in the percentages to be used (supplied by thirdeye above) and then you have exact weights to be used for the weight of your meat being used. You will need a nice scale that does grams, etc. But you'll be able to use this not only for your bacon making, but your sausages making too!


http://www.diggingdogfarm.com/page2.html - cure calculator

Dan

Yes, Martin's calculator is the way to roll. I was taught the long-hand calculation because bacon pre-dates the internet, and I do too.

Fun Fact, the digging dog calculator is so accurate, it calculates and adjusts for the salt carrier within the Cure #1 blend. So for example, when I calculate 1.7% ... the true number might be 1.8%.

[CivilTrojan]

One more question. Is mellowing just sitting in the fridge uncovered? Thanks for answering my other questions!

[thirdeye]

Originally Posted by CivilTrojan

One more question. Is mellowing just sitting in the fridge uncovered? Thanks for answering my other questions!

Yes, uncovered on a rack is mellowing, it can 'mellow' any bitterness if the smoke happened to be a little strong or improve the flavor in general. (if you wrapped it, condensation might form and you don't want that). "Blooming" comes into play as well after smoking. It's easier to notice after hot smoking, but blooming at room temperature will let the color darken a hair. Blooming is really obvious on cured and smoked sausage.

I use white sugar in my bacon formulation, but if you use light brown or dark brown sugar you will get a richer flavor and the outside will be a little darker. The downside to using brown sugar is you have to be more careful when frying as the edges can burn if you are not careful. Adding some maple sugar to the sugar component is another option.