First attempt buckboard bacon

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Nefarious

Master of the Pit
Original poster
Oct 10, 2021
1,614
1,305
Seattle WA
Before I get to carried away, I am attempting to make buckboard bacon, I was wondering if it matters what the profile of the meat is. I measured this piece and the smallest dimension is 3 1/4 inches. It weighs 3 lbs, and I know people do heavier.

I bought some Costco pork but to make some sausage from, but is way more then I can handle, so why not try some bacon.

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3 inch thickness is about the most you want to go with dry cured bacon. I'd halve it and keep any loose trim for sausage.
 
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A lot of times I find boneless Boston butt roasts in the store already at the ideal thickness .... think of what they sell as pork steaks but without the bone in the middle. To make your own, get as big a Butt as you can find. The bone in a butt comes out 2 sides so with the bone facing you and to your left, cut slabs a couple inches thick off the right side until you hit bone. What's left is deboned and used for sausage.

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Will not do it with boneless again from Costco. The purpose was to try my hand at linked sausage and I got this idea to make some buckboard bacon. First shoulder was fine, but second was torn apart and difficult to find a piece with 2 dimensions that would work.

My normal process when making pulled pork with a bone in shoulder is to cut the piece I want before I remove the bone. I get better pieces that way. We will see how this turns out. I ended with 3 random shaped pieces each weigh a lb. Two were under an inch thick, and the other was slightly over an inch.
 
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Those pieces will work fine. I usually cut the coppa muscle off, so basically like DougE DougE Said, and cure. But sometimes I have cut other chunks off too, smallee ones like you have.

I do an Equilibrium cure, but immersion with some liquid, because I don't trust I can distribute cure evenly amongst several pieces if dry. If one big piece of meat, then sure a dry rub works great.
But it is extremely simple. I also pump that EQ pickle into the meat. By using the correct amount of salt, sugar, and cure1 for the total weight of meat plus water, then let it sit immersed a few days, it all equalizes out correctly. Also allows you to use immersion method without accelerator, since you're not pumping then smoking 5 to 10 hrs later.
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I have found that 20% of the meat weight, as water, works ok if you stick it all in a vacuum sealed bag. But 50% works better if you put in a large ziplock.
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So, let's say I have 2kg meat. I use 50% water, 1kg, for 3kg total.
3% salt is 90g, and both diggingdogfarm and genuineideas dot com calculators will add another 5 or 6g salt to account for how water is tied up in meat, for 96g salt. 2% sugar is 40g. Cure for immersion or pumped bacon is limited to nitrite only by USFDA, at 120ppm max. No accelerator for immersion long brine, which is what this is. That is about 1.9g cure1 per kg (meat+water), or 5.7g total.

Mix it up and dump meat in with it in bag. Salt levels will be perfect at 3% (costco and sams club bacon are 4.8 and 5% salt, but you can select your own level). No rinsing of extra salt etc, repeatable perfect every time. You can pump the already correct brine into the meat for faster penetration and cure. No calculating 10% pickup or weighing meat before and after (that is for pump only with no soaking and immediate smoke, and must use accelerator).

Here are 3 buckboard bacon coppa muscles I did this week:
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I rarely start out with boneless butts, but I have hacked a few up pretty good deboning them. I'm better at it now, but still make a mess of one now and then.
 
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Those pieces will work fine. I usually cut the coppa muscle off, so basically like DougE DougE Said, and cure. But sometimes I have cut other chunks off too, smallee ones like you have.

I do an Equilibrium cure, but immersion with some liquid, because I don't trust I can distribute cure evenly amongst several pieces if dry. If one big piece of meat, then sure a dry rub works great.piece
i did them all individually, and in their own bag. Shouldn't take long to cure.
 
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