Cooking Bacon

[ecowper]

After 6 days in the cure ..... 1 slab of maple-whiskey and 2 slabs of sweet-savory :-)

basic steps

1. Build a cure/brine .... for 3 lbs of pork belly you need 3.5 g Prague Powder #1 and 1.25 cups distilled water. Can substitute other liquids, such as whiskey, maple syrup, etc for the water
2. Build a flavor profile .... 28-56 grams kosher salt, fresh herbs (garlic, thyme, rosemary), brown sugar, molasses, maple syrup, honey, black pepper, that sort of thing
3. Cure the pork belly for 5-7 days
4. Rinse well
5. Smoke at 250 with tasty wood .... I like hickory, oak, apple, mulberry
6. Slice, fry, eat

[HawkerXP]

What did we do before Costco!?! Nice looking meat!

I know, I know. Go to the German butcher. Who no longer has his shop because of the big box stores.

[ecowper]

My dad used to trade some of our beef after butchering to the guy up the road that raised pigs.

[JGo37]

I miss the butcher up the road a piece, just past where the old oak tree used to be...

[ecowper]

And the outcome ....

[EdF]

Well, let's be seeing some slices!

[CaptainMike]

Skin on?

[ecowper]

CaptainMike nope, just the fat cap

[ecowper]

Sliced ....

[ecowper]

Love that color! My wife was stealing slices straight off the cutting board

[Sweaty Paul]

Looks delicious

[JGo37]

My standard: WOW

And I guess I need a Costco membership..

[gmascolo51]

That bacon looks awesome! I have three belly portions defrosted all ready to brine and I have a quick question. After reading all the information you use the 3 lb recipe as the base. So for the salt, pepper etc. you adjust up or down based on the weight you have. Now for the liquid and the Prague Powder you use the 1 1/4 cup total liquid as the base and adjust it up or down and enter that into Professor’s calculator along with weight and thickness to determine the amount of Prague powder and # of days brining. So if I have 2.8 lbs of belly I would use approximately 1.17 cups of distilled water or all liquid in total: (1.25 * 2.8)/3x, solving for x. Thank you for any help or advice.

[ecowper]

You’ve got it figured out. Assuming that each slab is 2.8 lbs

[gmascolo51]

Thank you

[Xandera_7]

Just smoked some applewood bacon last night... Homemade bacon is a game changer. Never ever going back to store bought

[Bumby]

That looks great ecowper! I've got about 3 pounds each of your maple whiskey and sweet/savory in the fridge curing now!

[ecowper]

Let me know how it comes man ... I love to know if these recipes are as good for others as for me!

[Bumby]

You bet! Although, of course, anything less than amazing is probably the fault of yours truly!

[Troutman]

Excellent write up brother. Glad to see your how to offerings of late. I haven’t done bacon in some time, this inspires me to go buy some belly, although I’m not sure how well that’s going to do for my other belly !!!

[Bighorn Dave]

So what meat slicer do you have? It looks to cut very evenly and clean. I've been toying with getting a slicer and a grinder but tend to over analyze. When I see results like this I'm thinking that just mat be the right choice for a slicer and please don't say you sliced it free hand. LOL
Back on subject so thanks for the post. Going into a folder for future reference.

[ecowper]

Bighorn Dave I hate to say, but .... it was freehand with a 14” Mercer slicer :-)

[ecowper]

Troutman I love that knife .... best $25 (or something like that) I ever spent

[JGo37]

darnit Darnit DARNIT. This post just drove me to Amazon. It's $ 34 now. Then I saw the pink butcher paper link, & from there....

[HouseHomey]

I have about 6 of their knifes. I like the bread knife and the slicer. My others I put a 15° angle on and are my back up chef knifes. Razor sharp.

[Mosca]

Wow.

[gmascolo51]

Thank you to ecopower for the recipe and answering my question attached is slab 1 of 3.

[JeffJ]

When smoking pork belly what internal temperature is optimal?

[ecowper]

I like to be about 155-160

[HouseHomey]

Great post!