Bacon questions

[ryansguitars]

I have a couple pieces of pork belly in a batch of pops brine. I am wanting to smoke these after they have been in the brine for about 2 weeks. Do I need to soak them in clean water? Also it is getting hot out is it safe to cold smoke or do I need to hot smoke?

Thanks for the help.

 

[DougE]

Do a fry test and see how salty the meat is when it comes out of the cure. If too salty, than soak.

If you can manage to keep smoker temps around 80°F or so, you can cold smoke. This time of year, I can't, so I run my smoker at around 160°F and pull the bacon when it hits 145°F.

 

[DougE]

I'd also recommend equilibrium curing so the salt is always where you want it to be. It can be done as a wet or dry brine, but I prefer dry as the uptake is more reliable.

I weigh each piece out and do a dry cure using 0.25% cure#1, 1.5% salt, and 0.75% sugar to meat weight.

 

[SmokinEdge]

Doug has you covered, but I’ll add that if you really want cold smoke, do that at night. Very few locations in the USA run at or higher than 80F at night most of the year. Plus humidity comes up at night, this is a good thing when smoking generally.

 

[gmc2003]

If it starts warming up while your cold smoking just do shorter sessions more frequently.

Chris

 

[DougE]

If it starts warming up while your cold smoking just do shorter sessions more frequently.

Chris

Works in some areas, but as I type, ambient temp is 75°F, at which even just burning a tube with dust would push me into the warm smoking area.

 

[pineywoods]

It's usually to hot to cold smoke in the summer here even at night so I put a sprinkler on top of the smokehouse. It works so I can at least cold smoke stuff through the summer months

 

[ryansguitars]

Thanks for the replies everyone