Ref; First time around!- Back Bacon

[TomKnollRFV]

I will preface this with a heap of Praise to Disco, whose blog I am relying on for my recipes. Also this is not the cut I'd prefer. <But, it was the best I have seen recently, and the price was good>. As always; the picture quality is questionable, some day I'll take good pictures I swear.


So I got a 7.6 loin, and cut her into threes. Each piece was about the same size, the last one was the smallest; that is to be the Pepper Bacon. <Marginally smaller>.

Now I just have one question..should I have these all laid out, or can I sort of put two down in my fridge, and one on top? Space is a premium yet. Namely because of the horrid lay out of said fridge.

At any rate; you can see I labeled them and put a single mark on the bag. I'll add a mark each day so I know how long they've been in. Plan to knead and move around every morning and every night. Should I do this more then twice a day during curing? Figured roughly 12 hours apart between being massaged and all sounds good.

 

[SmokinAl]

Massage & flip them over every 24 hours. And yes you can stack them.
But after curing you would want to dry them in the fridge & in that case they should get air circulation all around each piece. You can use cooling racks with spacers between them & stack them on top of each other. But you need about 1" clearance between the pieces.
Depending on how thick they are I would cure them for at least 14 days.
Al

 

[TomKnollRFV]

Massage & flip them over every 24 hours. And yes you can stack them.
But after curing you would want to dry them in the fridge & in that case they should get air circulation all around each piece. You can use cooling racks with spacers between them & stack them on top of each other. But you need about 1" clearance between the pieces.
Depending on how thick they are I would cure them for at least 14 days.
Al

I timed it so when I'm at the part of air drying them there won't be tons of food/left overs in it. These also aren't super thick, 14 days might be over kill. I can do an exact measure but they're not terribly bigger then a center cut loin. <I didn't want to ask the poor clerk to go in back and look for any thing thicker. They will too. When I asked about their Briskets they had one guy go in back and come back with stuff they set aside for home smokers. Guess I must not be the only one going there for this reason!>

 

[SmokinAl]

Over curing is much better than under curing.
You could let them go for a month without any problems.
It must be nice to have a friendly butcher that knows about smoking & curing!
Al

 

[TomKnollRFV]

Over curing is much better than under curing.
You could let them go for a month without any problems.
It must be nice to have a friendly butcher that knows about smoking & curing!
Al

Well GFS is the only place to truly get huge hunks of meat like a brisket; and they put aside the 12-14 pounders that look the best trimmed in the package aside so smokers can look them over. Wish they sold pork butts year round.

 

[TomKnollRFV]

Alright, Tommorrow it'll have been 12 days, I plan to remove the bacon, rinse, and do the soak, as per Disco's blog :)

Wednesday, I'm going to smoke the bacon at 180f as per Disco's blog..but I got a few questions.

One; I'm not sure if people will -not- start eating it right away after it's off the smoker. Is bacon perfectly fine to start slicing and frying with out waiting two days?

Two; One piece had almost no liquid start coming out really, and every day I am worried this piece I some how failed to add enough cure or the like. Any way to tell if I screwed it up?

Three; is the weight loss percentage about 10-15% like streaky bacon?<Belly Bacon> or is it different? I'm just curious.

As always! Any other tips/hints/inputs are welcome!