Even more easy bacon *pops*

  • Some of the links on this forum allow SMF, at no cost to you, to earn a small commission when you click through and make a purchase. Let me know if you have any questions about this.
SMF is reader-supported. When you buy through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.

senator

Newbie
Original poster
Aug 6, 2011
6
10
2x 1.1 lbs of pork bellie using pops recipe. Only change to Pops recipe was the addition of some juniper berries, peppercorns and bay leaves. I also boiled the brine for 10 minutes then cooled it to under 4 degrees before putting the bellies in.

After 6 days I removed one of the bellies, I'm leaving the other to cure longer. Pics below are the for 6 day piece.

Pork and brine smelt good, no foul odour, cloudyness or scum. Pork smelt like pork still.

'grey' side is the side that was in contact with the brine. nice pink side is the colour from the middle of the piece.

be7a7171_DSC_0055.jpg


Slice:

6ebd1454_DSC_0056.jpg


Cooked:

feacbe4d_DSC_0058.jpg


I cooked it quite well done... This was green, next step is to smoke it!

Flavour was good, a bit sweet and a bit salty. Could taste the pork too. I'm fairly happy with it in its green state, tastes like good bacon.
 
Last edited:
Smoked it in a bradley portable propane smoker with Hickory for around 4 hours.

The bradley's are pretty vicious, really pumps through a whole lot of smoke.

Here's the finished product, took it to 140F internally in the meat, smoker was around 210F.

c3a39bd9_DSC_0066.jpg


Pellicle after 24 hours

cf95970b_DSC_0070.jpg


After 4 hours in the Bradley

588ecb43_DSC_0076.jpg


Finished product - looks good.

e0732f2d_DSC_0077.jpg


Cooked!

Tastes great- tiny bit sweet for me, will halve the sugar next time. But great all round!!
 
So glad you liked it, and that's the beauty about a wet brine, you can adjust and modify it to your liking, adding more ingredients, changing them for different flavorings, etc.  This is a basic brine - your imagination is limitless!
 
When you say cooled it to under 4 Degrees are you saying the liquid was at 4 degrees F. ???????

I thought it would be a block of ice by then. I have never done one so i am asking.

Karl
 
When you say cooled it to under 4 Degrees are you saying the liquid was at 4 degrees F. ???????


I thought it would be a block of ice by then. I have never done one so i am asking.


Karl

I'm guessing from his polite grammar and spelling of the words "colour" and "odour" that he may hail from outside the land of fahrenheit. Hence, I'm guessing he's referring to 4˚ C, just above freezing.
 
When you say cooled it to under 4 Degrees are you saying the liquid was at 4 degrees F. ???????

I thought it would be a block of ice by then. I have never done one so i am asking.

Karl
I'm guessing from his polite grammar and spelling of the words "colour" and "odour" that he may hail from outside the land of Fahrenheit. Hence, I'm guessing he's referring to 4˚ C, just above freezing.
That would make sense. I have been looking for pops recipe on bacon hopefully that will have the info on it.

tnx

Karl
 
I'm guessing from his polite grammar and spelling of the words "colour" and "odour" that he may hail from outside the land of fahrenheit. Hence, I'm guessing he's referring to 4˚ C, just above freezing.
I've been outed! I'm an Australian, and have been trying to stick to fahrenheit, pounds but I got caught out there. Yes, it is 4C...

I used Pops recipe, can't quite remember which thread I found it in... I also added bay leaves, pepper corns and juniper berries. I also hard boiled the brine for 10 minutes then cooled before starting the brining process.

?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?"Just to toss a big ol' wrench right in the middle of this..... try WET curing  instead of dry curing ... mix up ½ cup to 1 cup salt, 1 cup brown sugar, 1 cup plain ol' sugar, 1 tbsp. pink salt, and 1 gallon of water.  Dump your meat in a bucket, cover it with brine, let it sit for 5 - 7 days in the fridge, don't flip it, don't massage it, don't examine it.. just let it sit and cure.  Make up multiple batches as necessary or partial batches to cover it in brine. Toss a ziploc gallon bag half full of water (push the air out) on top of it to weight it down first.  After it cures, dump the brine, fry test (you don't need to soak ("freshen") it either!), smoke and enjoy!"
 
thanks everyone for the encouragement and feedback. I've eaten it all now :-)

Next batch I'm going to reduce the sugar and cure time. The long cured piece was 14 days, I'm going to drop it back to 10. I might do a cold smoke next time too.

I'm also going to skip the juniper berries and bay leaves, not sure they added anything.

There was a slight ash smell to the meat too, although I couldn't taste it- I think the brickettes must have ignited at some point in the bradley.

Otherwise, it was great fun - I'm looking forward to batch 2- will post it up once I've done it.
 
SmokingMeatForums.com is reader supported and as an Amazon Associate, we may earn commissions from qualifying purchases.

Latest posts

Hot Threads

Clicky