I've been curing my own pork bacon for awhile now, but my good friend
tx smoker
told me about his Beef Belly saga and convinced me to give it a try. Well, I was able to score some CPM beef belly from him and did give it a try and I've got to say, it's pretty dang good! I've tried a few different flavors of bacon, from plain, peppered and maple, but everyone (especially myself, who really matters!) prefers my Cajon bacon! I make my own blackened seasoning and I used that for my bacon. It's ah-mazing!
I thought I took pics before and after I applied the curing salt and seasonings, but it turns out I didn't. That said, what I did was added the right amount of cure (I built an iPhone app called Cure Calculator to calculate the amount of cure needed based on the weight of the meat awhile back) along with my seasoning in a bowl and mixed it up real good. I then applied it all like you'd normally apply a rub to all sides of the meat. In this case, I measured 2 different amounts of cure and mixed each one with the seasoning, one Cajon and one Black Pepper. After letting it cure in one of my refrigerators for about 2 weeks (about twice the time it takes for pork bacon), I took it out, rinsed each beef belly under cool water really good to get everything off of it. I then patted each one dry with paper towels, the re-applied just the seasoning to each beef belly and let it sit in the refrigerator again over night. The next day I put them on my Rectec smoker and smoked them until they got a nice color to them, about 4 1/2 hours.
After smoking them, I let them rest in the refrigerator again over night and then brought them out to slice. Here's the Cajon seasoned beef bacon.
And here's the Black Peppered beef bacon.
And finally vac sealed them for the freezer so I can pull it out as I need it.
All in all, it's pretty darn good! Not sure if I prefer it over the pork bacon yet, but it's pretty darn good!! Thanks again to my friend
tx smoker
for all his help!
tx smoker
told me about his Beef Belly saga and convinced me to give it a try. Well, I was able to score some CPM beef belly from him and did give it a try and I've got to say, it's pretty dang good! I've tried a few different flavors of bacon, from plain, peppered and maple, but everyone (especially myself, who really matters!) prefers my Cajon bacon! I make my own blackened seasoning and I used that for my bacon. It's ah-mazing!I thought I took pics before and after I applied the curing salt and seasonings, but it turns out I didn't. That said, what I did was added the right amount of cure (I built an iPhone app called Cure Calculator to calculate the amount of cure needed based on the weight of the meat awhile back) along with my seasoning in a bowl and mixed it up real good. I then applied it all like you'd normally apply a rub to all sides of the meat. In this case, I measured 2 different amounts of cure and mixed each one with the seasoning, one Cajon and one Black Pepper. After letting it cure in one of my refrigerators for about 2 weeks (about twice the time it takes for pork bacon), I took it out, rinsed each beef belly under cool water really good to get everything off of it. I then patted each one dry with paper towels, the re-applied just the seasoning to each beef belly and let it sit in the refrigerator again over night. The next day I put them on my Rectec smoker and smoked them until they got a nice color to them, about 4 1/2 hours.
After smoking them, I let them rest in the refrigerator again over night and then brought them out to slice. Here's the Cajon seasoned beef bacon.
And here's the Black Peppered beef bacon.
And finally vac sealed them for the freezer so I can pull it out as I need it.
All in all, it's pretty darn good! Not sure if I prefer it over the pork bacon yet, but it's pretty darn good!! Thanks again to my friend
tx smoker
for all his help!
