Bacon and ham

Here, pig, pig, pig...


Started the day with some hand sliced strips of the green chili bacon I smoked yesterday...















And finished the day with double-smoked, maple-glazed, spiral-sliced ham.





The ham was a spiral sliced, smoked with a mix of hickory and pecan. I glazed it with 1/4 cup of maple syrup, 1/4 cup brown sugar, and 2 tbspn yellow mustard.

I know I've posted the recipe here before, but here's the recipe for my Green Chili bacon...


All weights of spices given as a percentage of the weight of the pork belly being cured. So, you weigh the pork belly, and multiply that weight by the given percentage of the spice to get the amount of spice to use. For exam-ple, if you are using 1000 grams of pork belly, you use 3% coarse kosher salt. 1000 grams x 3% = 30 grams of salt. I do all my weights in grams. It's more accurate.

Ingredients

3% coarse kosher salt
3% green chili powder
2% white sugar
0.5% granulated garlic
0.5% granulated onion
0.5%ground cumin
0.25% cure #1

I cut the pork belly into smaller pieces to make handling easier. I mix the cure for each piece individually. Then I rub each piece thoroughly with the mix. The pork belly and all of the spice mix for that piece go into a bag. I vacuum pack, but you can use a zip-loc. Get all the air out, and try to equally distribute the mix that doesn't adhere to the meat through the bag. Place bags of curing pork in fridge and cure for ten days to two weeks, flipping the bags over each day.

After that you smoke. I use mesquite for the smoke. I smoke at 150 for up to four hours, or until the internal temp approaches 130. Then it goes into the refrigerator.