16 hour maple/hickory side bacon smoke with a side of beefribs and jerky

[t-bone tim]

Good day all, didn,t finish up till 3:30 am this morning,too tired to post then ,anyhow I did 2 full bellies cured with morton's sugar and smoke flavor dry cure,total of 9 days with cure and 2 days in the fridge after washing off cure to equilibriate the salt thruoght the pieces.
On day 2 ,I used 2 forks to pierce the bacon randomly on both sides and added 2/3 cup of pure maple syrup to each coating all over with a pastry brush....
day 3 flipped pieces and brushed with the brine...
day 4 flipped pieces and brushed with the brine...
day 5 flipped pieces and brushed with the brine...
day 6 cleaned out brine from containers and put racks under each bacon and brush coated on more syrup and left sitting meat side up.
On day 9 I washed bellies in luke warm water and placed in fridge a further 2 days.
Sunday May 20 placed bacon in front of fans 2 hours to dry,I put 4 lbs of jerky cured with hi-mountain original jerky cure and the 2 bellies cut in 1/2 in the cold smoke box,ran the MES (CENTRO)smoker at 230 degrees with hickory for 9 hours,thru on the beef backribs for a snack :) , foiled after 3 1/2 hrs with some semi dry merlot and stillhouse sauce (was out of apple juice,dang kids :).....yummy !! anyhow the jerky was not progressing well ( no fan in the cold smoker and not quite warm enough ) so I put it in the smoker and cut the heat back to 145 just enough to keep the chips going,took another 5 hours for it to finish....cold smoker avg temp for the day was approx 80 degrees and finally took the bacons out at the 16 hour mark,.......as always here's the pics !

 

[jts70]

God I am hungry . Looks great! I'll be doing some jerky soon , I am just about out . great job!!

 

[nogoer]

What are you using for a cold smoker? I finally got a peice of belly that im going to start the cure on tonight. My mothers finance is a bit of a farmer and had a friend he split a hog with. They saved me a peice of belly. Only problem is im not quite geared up with a cold smoker. I'm trying to figure out how to slap one together in a wek so i can smoke next weekend.

Another question though...I have the rhulman book on charcutrie. He says to hot smoke it after a 7 day cure. I think its a typo as i couldnt find any info on hot smoking bacon. It'll come out like crap though if i do right?

 

[teacup13]

wow.,...looks very tasty... whens breakfast?..lol

nogoer, you can make almost anything into a cold smoker, heck a cardboard box will do, i am not sure what smoker you have but if you are handy with some wood, you can make a box out of wood, run an aluminum vent to the wood box from your smoke stack... i will pm yah some details...

as for hot or cold smoking bacon, you should cold smoke it. cold smoking is imparting smoke flavor and hot smoking is cooking it.

 

[hillbillysmoker]

Great looking smoke. You should be proud of your effort. It is definitely a teaser for the taste buds. Thanks for sharing.

 

[t-bone tim]

Nogoer,what I use right now as my cold smoker is simply a cardboard box that my smoker came in that I framed around the outside with wood and put a dowel inside to hang bellies on smoke goes in via the 3 inch pipe on the bottom and vents out the top on the opposite side.
All the research I'v done so far says bacon is better smoked between 80 - 100 degrees,but can be done somewhat higher,problem is once the meat hits 140 it tends to start cooking and seals the outside preventing the desired smoke flavor from entering the meat.
I use a dry cure,with times stated on package as 7 days per inch of thickness....have not had the cold smoker go above 90 and have had zero problems...some pics of my set-up.

 

[deejaydebi]

Man those are some lean bellies! Now that'll be good bacon. Mine was so fat I couldn't find the meat!

Great Job Tim!

 

[billyq]

Please tell me that's gonna be thick cut bacon!...Mmmmm...bacon.......So how did the MES do?

 

[nogoer]

Tim, i was inspired by your masterbuilt setup when you posted it but i wasnt able to find one locally. I ended up getting a brinkmann electric bullet type. My plan was to put a wood box over it with a pipe linked to another box of wood or cardboard. I realized though i would need to raise the meat box up like you did and ran into some "engineering" hurdles.

I think i just need to start hacking and cutting and screwing together some wood and see where it takes me. My only real goal is a setup that is easy to break down and build up when needed.

 

[t-bone tim]

Yep it works good for me ,basically start from what you think up and go from there and modify to what you need it to do ...I plan on going to a metal box soon,the cardboard is just not gonna last,although it works good and was a quick fix to get started .