I got a few really big bellies this time at the chinese grocery store. I brine one on the 6th and smoked it all day today started at about 8am and pulled it at 12:30 am looked pretty enough.
I use a simple brine of :
1 gallon of ice water
1 cup powdered dextrose
3/4 cup real vermont amber maple syrup
8 ounces Kosher salt or Sea Salt
Prague powder #1
Mix it up good, cut the pork bellies into sizes I can handle throw them in a vacuum sealer bag and add about 3 to 4 cups of brine and seal it up. Then I just throw it in the fridge for a week.
After a week a wash it off real well in plain water, pat it dry with paper towel and let it sit for awhile , while I get the smokers going.
Once in the smoker I let it sit for about an hour to dry and get sticky at about 100ºF with the vent fully open then add wood. I like to use hickory and apple most of the smoke with a finish of cherry.
After the intial drying I let the temps go up to about 130ºF and keep the smoke rolling for between 12 and 16 hours depending on how they look. I like them to be a kind of orange red color, that's when they seem to taste the best. Sometime about mid smoke I will sprintz them a few times with apple juice. It helps sweeten them up I think.
It was in the upper 40's today so I could almost have used the propane on the Smoke Vault to do a cold smoke but not quite. It was pretty windy so at real low the fire kept blowing out so I used my abrieviated charcoal minion method for a cold smoke just had to add about 4 more coals to get up to temperature. I also brine and smoke the scraps for salt pork.
Here's the befores and afters:
I use a simple brine of :
1 gallon of ice water
1 cup powdered dextrose
3/4 cup real vermont amber maple syrup
8 ounces Kosher salt or Sea Salt
Prague powder #1
Mix it up good, cut the pork bellies into sizes I can handle throw them in a vacuum sealer bag and add about 3 to 4 cups of brine and seal it up. Then I just throw it in the fridge for a week.
After a week a wash it off real well in plain water, pat it dry with paper towel and let it sit for awhile , while I get the smokers going.
Once in the smoker I let it sit for about an hour to dry and get sticky at about 100ºF with the vent fully open then add wood. I like to use hickory and apple most of the smoke with a finish of cherry.
After the intial drying I let the temps go up to about 130ºF and keep the smoke rolling for between 12 and 16 hours depending on how they look. I like them to be a kind of orange red color, that's when they seem to taste the best. Sometime about mid smoke I will sprintz them a few times with apple juice. It helps sweeten them up I think.
It was in the upper 40's today so I could almost have used the propane on the Smoke Vault to do a cold smoke but not quite. It was pretty windy so at real low the fire kept blowing out so I used my abrieviated charcoal minion method for a cold smoke just had to add about 4 more coals to get up to temperature. I also brine and smoke the scraps for salt pork.
Here's the befores and afters:
