- Jan 5, 2018
- 5
- 0
I sliced up my first batch of bacon of the year today and was a little puzzled by it. For starters the middle was awfully red compared to my previous batches, and above it was a little gray (thinking nitrite burn?). Figured I'd ask what everyone's thoughts are about it here.
I have always dry cured my bacon using the digging dog farm calculator, and always use 156ppm cure.
Normally I weight out a batch of the rub and split it into 3 parts and apply it on day 1, 5, and 9. Along with letting it cure for a full 14 days. Cure was always applied only on the meat side and I never had an issue.
However this time I applied the whole rub at once, on just the meat side, wrapped it in saran wrap, put it on a cookie sheet and put it in the fridge, with another slab of belly on top of it (three in total actually). The next day juices where flowing good so I separated them into their own cookie sheet. This is where I got concerned thinking that bottom one gotta little extra blast of the rub from the juices of the other two bellies.
Here are some pictures of bacon for your evaluation.
I also noticed some small black marks in fat sections, posting that as I am unsure what it could be (thinking blood that turned black).
I have always dry cured my bacon using the digging dog farm calculator, and always use 156ppm cure.
Normally I weight out a batch of the rub and split it into 3 parts and apply it on day 1, 5, and 9. Along with letting it cure for a full 14 days. Cure was always applied only on the meat side and I never had an issue.
However this time I applied the whole rub at once, on just the meat side, wrapped it in saran wrap, put it on a cookie sheet and put it in the fridge, with another slab of belly on top of it (three in total actually). The next day juices where flowing good so I separated them into their own cookie sheet. This is where I got concerned thinking that bottom one gotta little extra blast of the rub from the juices of the other two bellies.
Here are some pictures of bacon for your evaluation.
I also noticed some small black marks in fat sections, posting that as I am unsure what it could be (thinking blood that turned black).