Canadian Back Bacon
I’ve always wanted to make some Back Bacon—that’s Canadian Bacon to all you folks south of the border—so when I bought a pig I figured to use the loin from that. My plans changed when Miss Linda asked to have the loin sliced for pork chops. OK, no big deal. I just headed down to Wally World and picked up one of their pork loins.
After trimming the loin, I cut it into 4 pieces. One for my neighbor, who suffers from terrible food allergies and can’t eat store bought bacon; one for Miss Linda’s daughter and her fiancé; one for my mechanic; and one for us. I should have bought two loins. One doesn’t go very far when it’s divided among four families. Oh well, next time I’ll know better.
Since my mamma didn’t raise no fools, the first thing I did was find and follow
Bearcarver
John’s Step-by-Step for Canadian Bacon. I weighed each piece, and then weighed out the correct amount of Cure #1 for each. To the dishes of cure I added brown sugar (1 Tbsp per pound) and salt (1/2 tsp per pound), mixed everything up, and spread it evenly over all exposed sides of the appropriate piece of loin. Then each piece—and all the seasoning and cure that had fallen off—went into individual bags and heat sealed without vacuum so there was air left in each bag. Then it was into the fridge, to be flipped and massaged daily for the properly calculated period of time. As it turned out, life interfered and the meat sat curing for about an extra week.Finally, the day arrived to fire up the smoker. I took the cured loin out of the fridge, rinsed it very well, and patted it dry with paper towels. Then each piece (except for my neighbor Heidi’s) was liberally sprinkled with ground garlic and fresh cracked black pepper. Since Heidi’s system can tolerate dried onion flakes, that’s what went onto her piece. After cutting two slices for the fry test, the meat then sat on a grill rack in front of the fan for about 3 hours to develop that oh so necessary pellicle. The fry test proved excellent! We’re good to go.
While the meat was drying, I thoroughly cleaned my sand filled water dish and main, bottom drip pan. Once spotless, they both received new tinfoil wraps before going into the MES 30 which was preheating to 170*. I filled the AMNPS with Todd’s Amazen Hickory Pellets, got it smoking beautifully and put it in the mailbox. Time for the loin to go in and start becoming bacon.
That’s when my problem showed up. No smoke. The hickory pellets had gone out. So I repeated my time proven routine and got the pellets smoking again. For about 10 minutes. Then the smoke disappeared again. Four times I relit the pellets. Four times they went out. Finally, in frustration, I dumped the full tray of Todd’s pellets in the garbage and refilled the AMNPS with BBQers Delight hickory pellets. Once I had them lit and smoking, I never had another problem. I have no idea why Todd’s pellets refused to burn. This was something new—I’ve never had that problem with his pellets. I’m doing some testing right now and will post the results.
So…..back to the bacon. After 5 ½ hours, according to my mew Thermoworks Smoke Thermometer, the meat had reached an IT of 135*, so I upped the temp in the MES to 190* for another 2 hours. The IT of the bacon was at 145* so I turned off the MES and opened the door to drop the cook chamber temperature to below 120*. I then closed the door and let the smoke roll for another 2 hours (to more than make up for time lost due to no smoke).
Sitting in an unheated smoker had helped cool the bacon, so it didn’t take too long to reach room temp once I moved it into the kitchen. At that point, I wrapped each piece in plastic wrap and left it in the fridge for 48 hour.
Two days later—almost to the hour (no, I wasn’t an eager beaver LOL) I put all the bacon in the freezer for 4 hours. As it turned out, our freezer must be a lot colder than Bear’s. I had to leave it all sitting on the counter to thaw enough to slice.
I fired up my brand new “bought it for a fantastic sale price” meat slicer. Well it didn’t take long to figure out why the price was so low. It sliced beautifully half way through and then the meat slice started tapering off to nothing. Hmmmm….. Oh well, that’s life in the cheap lane. There was nothing I could do about it, so I simply kept on slicing. As I sliced each party’s quarter of the loin, I vac/sealed it into meal sized portions, keeping each person’s share separate.
Final review: Everyone I give smoked meat to knows that I want an honest evaluation—that’s the only way I can alter ingredients and time/temp/smoke and improve my finished product. Everyone had nothing but good things to say about my first Back Bacon. They all loved it. And more importantly, Miss Linda said it was downright delicious!!!! Thank you Lord.
Now, I just have to make some more because this batch is unlikely to last very long. And, I’ll be checking out slicers in the very near future.
Now it’s time for some Q-view:
Ready to develop a Pellicle:
All cleaned up and new clothes:
Fresh out of the MES:
Sliced and ready for Vac/Sealing:
Thanks you John
Bearcarver
for the great Step-by-Step. As always it was perfect!!Thanks for looking.
Gary
