12 days to Bacon!

[uncle kenny]

I'm doing my second smoke of bacon then. I put belies on various dry cures tonight, all as experiments:

Morton Smoke flavor sugar cure

1/2 salt--1/2 white sugar with white pepper

1/2 salt--1/2 brown sugar with cracked black pepper corns

1/2 salt--1/2 brown sugar with crushed juniper berries

1/2 salt--1/2 white sugar with maple syrup

A word about Morton Smoke flavor sugar cure; OWW, that stuff is rank! I cut it with 25% more sugar. I'm curious about how it will taste but not too confident that it will suit our palates. Why put fake smoke flavor when it's going in the smoker? I'm using maple and apple by the way.

I set the cure timer for twelve days based on the weights and thickness, but I think they will firm up before then. The first "uncured" bacon I did firmed up nice by day nine. It was saltier than I wanted (I didn't soak it long enough I guess) but delicious and disappeared in a week.

I'll try Canadian Bacon after this, but for tomorrow night it's 4 beer can chickens. I love cookin' with wood and smoke!

 

[meateater]

Sounds great, don't forget the qview. I have 10# hitting the smoker wednesday. I ran out but won't buy store bought to hold me over.

 

[uncle kenny]

I don't plan to ever run out

Is Qview simply posting pictures to Flikr or Photobucket?

 

[meateater]

I don't plan to ever run out

Is Qview simply posting pictures to Flikr or Photobucket?

 That or you can load from your computer direct to the forum. Here's a Wiki on that.

http://www.smokingmeatforums.com/wiki/how-to-upload-images-to-the-new-smf-format

 

[uncle kenny]

Seven hours on smoke and the results look fine.  One of the three bellies are still in the cure; I didn't like the way they looked or felt so they can wait a couple more days. I was pleased to have kept the temp between 90 and 110F the whole time!

 

[les3176]

MMMMM bacon..good looking bellies ya got there!!!

 

[uncle kenny]

dang it! i forgot to Qview this morning's breakfast

Now its all vacc'd and in the freezer. I cut 'em in half, so the pieces are sandwich sized and lots easier to cut. Still jonesin' for a slicer. Breaky was the juniper berry belly and there wasn't much juniper there. I wonder if brining would boost that flavor?

I had this belly in fresh water rinse for 1.5 hours--changed the water every :20. Still too salty for my taste so I'll go longer in the rinse with a few chunks of potato thrown in for good measure.

I still have a belly on the cure. It just didn't look or feel right. It was kinda thin to begin with, and never firmed up. Now on day 12 and no improvement in texture or color. It's very mysterious.

The CB is also on cure and looks wonderful. On smoke Wednesday soonest.

Thanks to y'all for the great reading on this forum

 

[meateater]

Now there ya go using a rib rack for bacon.

 Where were you when I smoked the last two bellies, sheesh.