Maple Bacon

[nomadd917]

I will be doing an equilibrium brine for my maple bacon.

This is the rough draft plan #1.

Looking for some input on the maple flavor aspect.

All weights and measurements are in grams.

Equilibrium percentages
% Salt 2.0%
% Sugar 2.0%
PPM Sodium Nitrite 156
Using Cure #1 Nitrite 6.25%

Meat 4536.00 ~10 lbs
Water 2098.00 ~ 2 1/4 quarts
Cure #1 17.33
Kosher Salt 122.58
Sugar 0.00
Maple Syrup 173.43 (this is about 3/4 cup)

My maple syrup contains 48 grams of sugar per 60 ml

This works out to 3/4 cup of maple syrup for 10 pounds of pork belly. I don't think this will add much flavor at all to 10 lbs of meat. I have read about adding 3/4 cup of maple syrup to ~3 lbs of belly and only count the syrup towards liquid only and then separately add sugar to your desired %. My concern with doing it that way is the fairly high concentration of total sugar and the bacon could scorch easily while cooking.

I have read about adding maple extract. Would this work in an equilibrium brine to add additional maple flavor? If so, how much extract would need to be added?

What has everyone else done?

****Please note my percentages do take into account the entire weight of the brine; including the Water, Meat, sugar, salt, cure, and maple syrup. I have created my own spreadsheet that gets the percentages to be a a few decimals over 99% accurate. I am an excel nerd.

 

[indaswamp]

Skip the wet brine cure and do a dry brine cure (no added water). Kick up the maple flavor with 100% maple extract, 1~2 TBSPS. in the bag with the dry brine cure. I call it dry brine cure because the meat will make it's own moisture in the bag, and form a concentrated brine....Use brown sugar and skip the maple syrup....
If you cure for 14 days, the salt will start pulling out moisture, but as it travels in, the reverse will happen and the meat will now pull all that moisture back in, along with the maple extract.
Or, you could inject maple syrup like Disco does...but I find that real 100% maple extract gives a much bigger punch of maple because it is concentrated.

You can also put the maple extract in a small spray bottle and spray the bacon slabs while they are hanging to dry in the refrigerator...The water and alcohol will evaporate leaving the intense concentrated essence of maple....I recommend hanging to dry 5~7 days....

You can also smoke with maple dust....that will add another layer of maple flavor.

This is how I recently made a batch of maple buckboard bacon.

 

[mdntxprs]

Could you use maple sugar to get the maple flavor?
I tried brown sugar long ago with some of my first attempts at bacon and it got really dark when fried and unappealing and didnt taste all that great.
I've made lots of bacon since but I've stayed away from sugar.
Thanks,

 

[BuckeyeSteve]

This thread reminded me of this.