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Bacon or Salami

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    Bacon or Salami

    It's time for me to throw a question to the Brains Trust here.
    Been pretty happy with the bacon I have been curing and hot smoking in my COS the last couple of years.
    Using a few tweaks occasionally, but basically the standard AR EQ cure and haven't eaten store bought bacon since.

    The second last batch I did was rushed and under smoked and was really missing that aspect of the bacon flavour.
    So this time I loaded it up good, it smelt fantastic as it was cooling on the bench, even the bride (who pretends not to like pork) commented on it.
    Left it a week in the fridge to mellow as I usually do, then testerday it was time for the Saturday morning fry up!

    I unwrapped it and it smelt like salami, damn I thought, I've over smoked it.
    Fried it just nice and it smelt good while cooking, but when we ate it, we all agreed it didn't have that typical acrid taste of over smoked.

    Don't get me wrong, to quote one A. Brown, it was still Good Eats but my question is, what causes this salami type smell & taste if it's not the smoke? I cured it exactly as I have done the many cures beforehand, the only difference I can see was this slab of belly was narrower and thicker than usual.

    Thanks in advance for any advice, pic attached to prove it happened haha
    Click image for larger version

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    #2
    " I cured it exactly as I have done the many cures beforehand, the only difference I can see was this slab of belly was narrower and thicker than usual."

    Thickness will affect time needed in cure. Did you extend the cure time. if not, it might have been under cured and thus some of what you got was just smoked belly.

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      #3
      Thanks for the input mate, just to clarify, I normally apply the rule of thumb of 1 day curing per 1/4" of thickness, this was curing for 8 days

      Comment


        #4
        Huh. well, I can see only a few variables:

        1) cure composition.
        2) cure 'strength' (i.e. how much salt etc per pound).
        3) Cure length
        4) Smoke type (both of smoker and what kind of wood used
        5) Smoke length.

        Assuming you used the same cure recipe and scaled it to the size and weight of the belly then I can only think it was smoke length or wood type. Odd.

        Comment


          #5
          The harvested piggie in question obviously had a diet deep in Subway Italian sammies - bacon is best when prepared from free-range baconator hogs. Don't get silly here - even feeding your hoggies turkey bacon is much better than pepperoni pizzas.

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