No more store bought bacon

Henry Kloss

Well-Known Member
Got a smoker for Christmas, the first project is bacon. There is a meat packing plant near my work that sells to the public. I get a 15 Lb. belly and they have a machine that takes the skin off leaving a nice layer of fat. I take it home and cut my three 4 Lb. slabs and trim the edges. The slabs go into large ziplock bags with the curing salt, seasoning and maple syrup. Into the fridge for 7 days turning and massaging daily.

The slabs are rinsed under cold water and soaked for 2 hours in a large pot of fresh cold water. They are then dried and put on drying racks for a couple of hours at room temp. Then into the fridge overnight to continue drying.

I paint the slabs with maple syrup and cover them with course black pepper.

I use a warm smoke method, Temp. between 80 and 90 degrees F. so I smoke for 6 to 12 hours depending on when I start. This differs from a hot smoke, where the internal temp reaches 150 F. and smoking time is about 3 or 4 hours.

A few pics.

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Man that looks good. I can't even buy slab bacon around here to cut myself. You are lucky they take the skin off for you. For what I've read, that's the hardest part of making bacon.
 
Man that looks good. I can't even buy slab bacon around here to cut myself. You are lucky they take the skin off for you. For what I've read, that's the hardest part of making bacon.

Tell me about it, the first batch I did I bought a couple of slabs from the Asian market and skinned them myself. It looked like hacksaw Jim had been at them. They still turned out OK but having them skinned saves me a ton of time.

There's got to be some farmers in your area doing belly's

more pics
 

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Don't mean to thread crap but honestly this looks like a lot of work. Is it much better than store bought bacon?
 
Don't mean to thread crap but honestly this looks like a lot of work. Is it much better than store bought bacon?

It's something I enjoy doing, I would say it's approximately 12 or 13 times better than store-bought bacon. I have about 10 pounds of store-bought bacon stockpiled in my freezer. My wife is slowly giving it away to whoever will take it. I can't even eat the BLTs at the work cafeteria anymore because of the crappy commercial bacon. So yeah it's worth it.
 
It's something I enjoy doing, I would say it's approximately 12 or 13 times better than store-bought bacon. I have about 10 pounds of store-bought bacon stockpiled in my freezer. My wife is slowly giving it away to whoever will take it. I can't even eat the BLTs at the work cafeteria anymore because of the crappy commercial bacon. So yeah it's worth it.

Good deal then. My dad did some homemade bacon when I was a kid. I'm not sure how he smoked it but I remember it hanging in the basement.

How do you slice it? Do you have a slicer?
 
I have contemplated doing this myself using my pellet smoker. What has kept me from doing it is I found a smoke house that I pass by occasionally that smokes their own bacon. They keep it as slab until you buy it the slice it to your specification. I always arrange to go buy there during tomato season so I can eat my fill of BLTs with the tomatoes from my garden. They also smoke their own kielbasa which is also on the grocery list.
 
Had the best bacon from a store ever. Signature Select (Safeway,Vons) uncured yellow package. Really makes Oscar Mayer seem like garbage.
 
Hey
I have done this in the past. The recipe I had ,I left the skin on until after the smoke. Your way .aes more sense.
I was using a local meat market's cure but also made my own. If I remember correctly it called for pink curing salt.
I have the book at home. It's title is "Charcuterie. Eric
 
The reason it's pink is because if you add as much as regular salt you'll die.

Anyone who wants to make they're own bacon absolutely needs to do they're homework. It's not hard but strict rules must be followed. Here in Canada we can't get (pink salt), The sodium nitrite is pre mixed with regular salt in a mix called Readycure.

Find a good trusted web site or 2 or 3 and do some learnin.
 
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