I picked up two pork bellies from my small local meat processor a couple weeks ago. They are around 9 pounds each.
Cut each one into manageable thirds.
Used a pretty standard sugar/salt/cure mix but three of them got maple syrup in the mix and the other three got black pepper and a bit of onion and garlic powder.
Ready for a 10 day cure.
After 10 days curing and an hour or so in a water bath they went back in the refer overnight to form a nice pellicle, then into the smoker. I smoked them in separate batches, the maple with maple pellets and the pepper with hickory. I used Disco's (Old Fat Guy's) double smoke method, 5 hours of cold smoke followed by an overnight rest then warm smoke (180F smoker temp) to an internal temp of 120F.
Pepper on the left, maple on the right.
I still need to slice and package it all up but I couldn't resist a test. I used the Lodge griddle on the Weber gasser. The left burner is on high and the right one off. I wanted to see if the cast iron griddle would be enough cooler on the right side to do eggs without burning them to a crisp. It worked well. The eggs don't look great in the pic but I folded the spread out edges back over and they came out nice over easy. This is the pepper bacon. The wife pronounced the best yet.
If you have not made your own bacon yet you need to do it. I gaurantee you will never go back to store bought again.
Cut each one into manageable thirds.
Used a pretty standard sugar/salt/cure mix but three of them got maple syrup in the mix and the other three got black pepper and a bit of onion and garlic powder.
Ready for a 10 day cure.
After 10 days curing and an hour or so in a water bath they went back in the refer overnight to form a nice pellicle, then into the smoker. I smoked them in separate batches, the maple with maple pellets and the pepper with hickory. I used Disco's (Old Fat Guy's) double smoke method, 5 hours of cold smoke followed by an overnight rest then warm smoke (180F smoker temp) to an internal temp of 120F.
Pepper on the left, maple on the right.
I still need to slice and package it all up but I couldn't resist a test. I used the Lodge griddle on the Weber gasser. The left burner is on high and the right one off. I wanted to see if the cast iron griddle would be enough cooler on the right side to do eggs without burning them to a crisp. It worked well. The eggs don't look great in the pic but I folded the spread out edges back over and they came out nice over easy. This is the pepper bacon. The wife pronounced the best yet.
If you have not made your own bacon yet you need to do it. I gaurantee you will never go back to store bought again.
