A few weeks ago I picked up two skinless bellies from my local custom butcher house, total about 20 pounds at $2.29 a pound. A bargain, I thought.
I cut the bellies into smaller pieces of about 4 pounds each then mixed up a cure following Bearcarver's "Extra Smokey" thread and moved to the spare refer for 14 days or so.
After the cure I soaked the pieces for about an hour to get rid of any excess salt. I didn't do a test fry, just taking it on faith that it wouldn't be too salty (turns out, that was right). Then it went into the MES for a 12 hour cold smoke with apple pellets in the AMAZEN tray. Ambient temp was in the mid 80F range and I needed to put a couple freezer bricks in the smoker to keep the temp under 100F. That's what you see in the white plastic bag on the bottom shelf.
After the 12 hour smoke we cut a few slices to test for "smokeyness." We decided it was good and we didn't need to do a second smoke, so the slabs went back into the refer uncovered to rest a few days.
Slicing day: We spent most of the afternoon and evening slicing, with breaks while the slabs went in and out of the freezer. We put our Chef's Choice slicer through a workout. Here's one of the two bins of sliced bacon.
And we had to cook up some. We like to have some pre-cooked in the freezer for use in other recipes and such. We typically oven bake it and we both like it extra-crispy. The rest we will vac-seal and freeze. That is today's task.
And, a BLT with 'maters fresh from the garden, the first of many, many more.
And a bacontini. Because, why not?
If you haven't made your own bacon yet, you need to. So much better than the store bought pre-packaged stuff. And a lot less expensive.
I cut the bellies into smaller pieces of about 4 pounds each then mixed up a cure following Bearcarver's "Extra Smokey" thread and moved to the spare refer for 14 days or so.
After the cure I soaked the pieces for about an hour to get rid of any excess salt. I didn't do a test fry, just taking it on faith that it wouldn't be too salty (turns out, that was right). Then it went into the MES for a 12 hour cold smoke with apple pellets in the AMAZEN tray. Ambient temp was in the mid 80F range and I needed to put a couple freezer bricks in the smoker to keep the temp under 100F. That's what you see in the white plastic bag on the bottom shelf.
After the 12 hour smoke we cut a few slices to test for "smokeyness." We decided it was good and we didn't need to do a second smoke, so the slabs went back into the refer uncovered to rest a few days.
Slicing day: We spent most of the afternoon and evening slicing, with breaks while the slabs went in and out of the freezer. We put our Chef's Choice slicer through a workout. Here's one of the two bins of sliced bacon.
And we had to cook up some. We like to have some pre-cooked in the freezer for use in other recipes and such. We typically oven bake it and we both like it extra-crispy. The rest we will vac-seal and freeze. That is today's task.
And, a BLT with 'maters fresh from the garden, the first of many, many more.
And a bacontini. Because, why not?
If you haven't made your own bacon yet, you need to. So much better than the store bought pre-packaged stuff. And a lot less expensive.
