After ruining more things with cure than I care to admit, I pulled off my first successful bacon cure & smoke! I'll keep it short and to the point.
Had a 6ish pounder bone-in shoulder. Following various guides and recipes on SMF I cut it into two halves lengthwise along the bone. Trimmed them up a bit so that final pre-cooked weights were 2.5# each but one was a tad thicker than the other.
Cure for the thick one was your basic Tender Quick, brown sugar, CBP.
Cure for the thin one was the above plus garlic and onion powder and some of my own chipotle powder (Doc's home-made, home-grown, & home-smoked chipotle powder).
Gave'em both 7 days in cure, vacuumed sealed in the fridge, spun'em daily.
Smoked in hickory and mesquite 5 hours around 160 - 175* until internal 135*.
Sorry, pre-today pics are trapped on my wife's camera....
Both flavors came out pretty good. Spiced one is subtly different, nowhere near overpowering.
Had a 6ish pounder bone-in shoulder. Following various guides and recipes on SMF I cut it into two halves lengthwise along the bone. Trimmed them up a bit so that final pre-cooked weights were 2.5# each but one was a tad thicker than the other.
Cure for the thick one was your basic Tender Quick, brown sugar, CBP.
Cure for the thin one was the above plus garlic and onion powder and some of my own chipotle powder (Doc's home-made, home-grown, & home-smoked chipotle powder).
Gave'em both 7 days in cure, vacuumed sealed in the fridge, spun'em daily.
Smoked in hickory and mesquite 5 hours around 160 - 175* until internal 135*.
Sorry, pre-today pics are trapped on my wife's camera....
Both flavors came out pretty good. Spiced one is subtly different, nowhere near overpowering.