- May 14, 2016
- 35
- 12
So as the title says, there are a lot of firsts here..
We raised five pigs this past year and got them to an average weight between 450 to 525 pounds..
We slaughtered our first pig.. what an adventure that was..
I built a smoker.. Never even seen a smoker in my lifetime except on websites like this one.
I smoked a 5lb chunk of bacon.. (yes, it cured for 10 days first!)
So the pig was a Berkshire(?).. it took us about 8 hours to slaughter and butcher it... another 8 hours to wrap the meat and start curing hams and bacon.
The smoker I built is mostly 11 gauge stainless steel inside.. including the racks.. Its 7ft tall, 42 or something wide, and about 54 inches deep.. I'm using Natural gas and a home made pipe burner with a gas mixing orifice.
I also built a quickie smoke generator from some black iron pipe and a couple of wood stove chimney sections. We used Hickory and I only turned it on for 5 minutes at a time (twice) during a 2 hour run with the bacon.
Made a couple of mistakes.. My bacon cure was a dry powder rub in a ziplock bag and when I removed it, I soaked it in cold water for only 10 minutes or so.. I think I should have let it sit for an hour or two because the bacon is kind of salty.. some of the edges were so salty as to destroy my taste buds for at least two hours..
The other mistake I made was not enough smoke.. Since I'm using a smoke generator and not actually burning logs, I was concerned about putting too much smoke in the chamber and ruining the meat. Looks like I can probably increase the smoke time from 5 minutes to 10 or more.
Its a good thing I only tried smoking a 5lb chunk and not the entire slab..
Here are some photos of my smoker:
One design mistake I made was that I was surprised by the amount of extra free air needed.. I had to remove some screws in the bottom panel and pull it out to let extra air into the system. looks like I'm going to need to remove it and cut in some large vent holes with some kind of adjustable doors to control air flow.
The smoker ran at 220 degrees and we heated the bacon to 150 degrees internal temperature and used a ThermoWorks Smoke to monitor it all.. That little thermoworks device works very very well..
Notice the snow still on top of the unit.. That's after 4 hours of running.. 2 hours of adjustment and sterilization, then 2 more hours of smoking bacon.. Its well insulated..
We raised five pigs this past year and got them to an average weight between 450 to 525 pounds..
We slaughtered our first pig.. what an adventure that was..
I built a smoker.. Never even seen a smoker in my lifetime except on websites like this one.
I smoked a 5lb chunk of bacon.. (yes, it cured for 10 days first!)
So the pig was a Berkshire(?).. it took us about 8 hours to slaughter and butcher it... another 8 hours to wrap the meat and start curing hams and bacon.
The smoker I built is mostly 11 gauge stainless steel inside.. including the racks.. Its 7ft tall, 42 or something wide, and about 54 inches deep.. I'm using Natural gas and a home made pipe burner with a gas mixing orifice.
I also built a quickie smoke generator from some black iron pipe and a couple of wood stove chimney sections. We used Hickory and I only turned it on for 5 minutes at a time (twice) during a 2 hour run with the bacon.
Made a couple of mistakes.. My bacon cure was a dry powder rub in a ziplock bag and when I removed it, I soaked it in cold water for only 10 minutes or so.. I think I should have let it sit for an hour or two because the bacon is kind of salty.. some of the edges were so salty as to destroy my taste buds for at least two hours..
The other mistake I made was not enough smoke.. Since I'm using a smoke generator and not actually burning logs, I was concerned about putting too much smoke in the chamber and ruining the meat. Looks like I can probably increase the smoke time from 5 minutes to 10 or more.
Its a good thing I only tried smoking a 5lb chunk and not the entire slab..
Here are some photos of my smoker:
One design mistake I made was that I was surprised by the amount of extra free air needed.. I had to remove some screws in the bottom panel and pull it out to let extra air into the system. looks like I'm going to need to remove it and cut in some large vent holes with some kind of adjustable doors to control air flow.
The smoker ran at 220 degrees and we heated the bacon to 150 degrees internal temperature and used a ThermoWorks Smoke to monitor it all.. That little thermoworks device works very very well..
Notice the snow still on top of the unit.. That's after 4 hours of running.. 2 hours of adjustment and sterilization, then 2 more hours of smoking bacon.. Its well insulated..
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