Cure vs smoke

Smoking is just that smoking. Curing is the process required to do before smoking when making items like ham and bacon.

Start reading the bacon forum here and look up Pop's Brine, Digging Dog Farms universal cure calculator.

When you get your meat, freeze it all until you are comfortable moving forward with curing. Then start with an easy piece like the belly and try making bacon.

Then try brine curing a ham. If you feel real brace and have lots of time you could try a country ham.

Type any or all the above into the search feature here and you will have months of reading.

In this thread I have links to Pop's Brine and Digging dog farms cure calculators. There's also a ham thread and several bacon threads.

http://www.smokingmeatforums.com/t/191066/dirtsailors-mega-mother-of-all-cooking-links-index