Well I got 12 lbs of bellies from my butcher. I removed the skin and rubbed them using Bearcarver"s recipe (1/2 oz of TQ/lb of meat and 1 tbs brown sugar/lb). In to some vacum sealed bags. These stayed like this for nine days while I was on the road working. Jo (the wife) flipped and rubbed the bellies once a day for me (lucky meat)
Once I got home I took them out of the vac packing and into a sink of ice cold water. Here they sat for an hour.
Did a quick little salt taste. Just look at the color and that's before smoking. Perfect salt content!!
Quick pic of my smokehouse
Here we are after a couple hours (you can see my little sampler on the top bar LOL). You can just make out the TBS
In this next pic you can see the hot plate I used as my heat source. I kept my chip pan (aka cast iron frying pan) just above the element and this held my temps around 98-101 for the entire smoke. I used a mix of hickory and maple and smoke these for around 12 hrs. One pan of chips smokes for about 6 hrs.
Once smoking finished they had taken on a wonderful color. The bottom one was coated in CBP
Sliced up
And a pile of bacon
And of course need to fry some up and eat it sorry no finished pics but it was a battle for every piece this stuff turned out soooo good I don't think I will every eat store bought bacon again.
I would like to give a big thanks to Bearcarver for posting his recipe for us all to use. Next up I just bought a 11 lb loin so Canadian Bacon is on the list gonna rub it in cure vac pac and off to camp I go for 9 days (gotta love the way my schedule is almost designed to make bacon) thanks for checking out my bacon.
Once I got home I took them out of the vac packing and into a sink of ice cold water. Here they sat for an hour.
Did a quick little salt taste. Just look at the color and that's before smoking. Perfect salt content!!
Quick pic of my smokehouse
Here we are after a couple hours (you can see my little sampler on the top bar LOL). You can just make out the TBS
In this next pic you can see the hot plate I used as my heat source. I kept my chip pan (aka cast iron frying pan) just above the element and this held my temps around 98-101 for the entire smoke. I used a mix of hickory and maple and smoke these for around 12 hrs. One pan of chips smokes for about 6 hrs.
Once smoking finished they had taken on a wonderful color. The bottom one was coated in CBP
Sliced up
And a pile of bacon
And of course need to fry some up and eat it sorry no finished pics but it was a battle for every piece this stuff turned out soooo good I don't think I will every eat store bought bacon again.
I would like to give a big thanks to Bearcarver for posting his recipe for us all to use. Next up I just bought a 11 lb loin so Canadian Bacon is on the list gonna rub it in cure vac pac and off to camp I go for 9 days (gotta love the way my schedule is almost designed to make bacon) thanks for checking out my bacon.