Smoked some bacon today

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vivid

Fire Starter
Original poster
Dec 27, 2013
46
24
Ohio
My girlfriend surprised me with a tender-belly bacon kit for valentines day.  The kit came with a 4lb pork belly along with the cure/rub mixture.  If you guys haven't tried making your own home-made bacon yet I highly encourage you to do so.  I don't care that it takes a week to sit in the dry rub, I'm never buying store-bought crap ever again!

Here's the pork belly, thawed and dried and ready for the cure:


Cure is on:


One week later I've taken it out of the fridge after flipping it multiple times throughout the week to distribute the cure evenly.  I smoked the bacon at about 225 for roughly 3.5 hours until internal temps reached 150.


SOOO GOOD.



 
That looks good. What did the cure/rub mixture contain? Did you have to weigh out the mix or did you just have to add the whole sachet/packet to the belly?
 
Did you do a saltr test after it cured? I recently made bacon and I am very glad I tested it for salt before smoking it. Way too salty until I soaked it for over an hour.

Then...perfect.

Yours looks great - much more meat than most bellies I have seen around here.

What's next? Pastromi?
 
My girlfriend got me this "Man Crate" for valentines day.  It included the porkbelly, all the seasonings, and a pound of their own bacon.  Pretty awesome:  http://www.mancrates.com/projects/bacon-curing-kit

As for a salt test?  I don't have any test other than my own tastebuds, but it does taste less salty to me than regular store bought bacon.

I may try to do pastrami next, especially since I have my own commercial grade meat slicer! :)
 
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