Mikhail
Babbling Farker
Great looking birds.
Robert, dry curing is truly a method or technique because the recipe portion is amazingly simple.... but it's a good starting point. I'll use bacon as an example. First, you decide how you like your bacon with respect to saltiness, sweetness, and additional flavoring like maple or black pepper. Each of these things has a range of percentages. For me, I like bacon lower in salt, not too sweet and I like black pepper on it. My recipe is:
Pork belly - skin removed
1.8% salt
1% sugar (and I prefer using white sugar)
0.25% Cure #1 (this is a constant and never changes)
Black Pepper evenly sprinkled on the pork belly
Crushed bay leaf lightly sprinkled
Roasted garlic powder lightly sprinkled
All percentages are based on the trimmed weight of the pork belly. If you are doing more than one belly at the same time, it's best to weigh each one, and calculate the ingredients for each one. I weigh the belly in kilograms, and measure all ingredients in grams. For example, to obtain 1.8% salt I need 18 grams of salt per kilogram of belly. If the trimmed belly weighs 2.65 kilograms the calculation is: 18 X 2.65 = 47.7 grams of salt. You might like a saltier bacon, so pick a higher percentage like 2%. You should bump the sugar a hair as it offsets some of the salt, so 1.5% sugar might be good. If you like really sweet bacon, you can go higher on the sugar, but you really have to watch out when frying as high sugar content can cause it to burn.
All the ingredients are mixed together very well, and distributed on the belly. The belly goes into a zipper bag. I add a tablespoon of bottled water to sort of start the curing process. Every day the bag is turned over and as liquid forms, I'll massage it. After 11 or 12 days the curing is complete. The belly is rinsed to remove residual salt, and I do a soak-out for 3 hours. The belly will have some pepper left, but I give it a new sprinkle, set it on a rack on a pan and refrigerate 12 to 20 hours. This builds the pellicle which allows the smoke to adhere better.
At this point you have several options for smoking. Hot smoke, cold smoke, or a combination of the two. I like to cold smoke, as close to 70° as possible for 4 hours, then wrap the belly in plastic and back in the fridge until the next day. On day two, I cold smoke again for 4 or 5 hours, wrapping and refrigerating until the following day. I partially freeze and slice, then stack and vacuum seal it.
Here is my cold smoking set-up
Here are some samples I took after the second cold smoke, I could have done round 3 if I wanted to.
Here is what it looks like after cooking
I like to bag up some of the ends to use when cooking beans.
I have always dry cured bacon, but your reply on the page before has me thinking I'll try a wet cure just 'cause why not?
I'm noticing in your smoking process above you're not shooting for a particular IT, which kinda jives with what I've been discovering. I used to take it to 155, but it seemed that the bacon didn't cook up as well as it could have, 'cause it was basically cooked already after I smoked it. It's seeming more and more to me like it's all just about getting smoke. Rytek Kutas (I'm guessing you know who that is) goes for 127 then color as desired. I can't usually smoke at 70 degrees though, 'cause we rarely get below that here except for at night.
Anyway - I have found that lower finish temp makes for bacon that cooks up a lot better, and there's no need to get to 155 in the smoking process 'cause the meat is cured - in fact, it's cured for that very reason.
Great stuff as always. I got a 10# slab of belly that'll be getting cured one way or the other starting today. :whoo:
Great stuff all around! :clap2:
I'm noticing in your smoking process above you're not shooting for a particular IT, which kinda jives with what I've been discovering. I used to take it to 155, but it seemed that the bacon didn't cook up as well as it could have, 'cause it was basically cooked already after I smoked it. It's seeming more and more to me like it's all just about getting smoke. Rytek Kutas (I'm guessing you know who that is) goes for 127 then color as desired. I can't usually smoke at 70 degrees though, 'cause we rarely get below that here except for at night.
Anyway - I have found that lower finish temp makes for bacon that cooks up a lot better, and there's no need to get to 155 in the smoking process 'cause the meat is cured - in fact, it's cured for that very reason.
Great stuff as always. I got a 10# slab of belly that'll be getting cured one way or the other starting today. :whoo:
Great stuff all around! :clap2:
Technically at 145° you bacon is considered fully cooked. So like a ready-to-eat ham you can fry it, just warm it up, or actually eat it as is. Some people take it to 150° as they only want to cook it enough to crisp up the edges or render some of the fat. Kutas is right, many use high 120° for their finish temp. Storenought bacon may or may not be in that range depending on brand. My double-cold smoked bacon could get a hot finish, but I like it as is. And you are right, the cure is what protects you.
I believe this is some bacon cooked to 145° - 150°ish. It was only lightly fried. You can see it looks different from the photo above.
