second try at bacon?

[steve8]

Ruined the first one, ugh.

Picking up a fresh pork belly tomorrow.

Thinking adding a little real maple syrup on the pork first.

I assume just use a small amount before spices?

Then:

1/c cup kosher salt.

1/3 cup lt brown sugar.

3 tbsp pepper.

And this time 1/2 tsp pink curing salt instead of 2 tsp!!!!

Bag it for a week/flipping once/day.

Rinse well, possibly fry a small piece after rinse to make sure it's not too salty. If salty rinse some more, if not in to the smoker.

Sound about right?

Obviously open to comments.

 

[dirtsailor2003]

In order to dry cure bacon you need to know the weight of what you are curing. Convert the weight to grams and then used this calculator to determine the proper amount of salt, sugar, and cure that you need.

Weighing the ingredients is the best way to go. You can get a good gram scale that weighs to a hundredth of a gram for less than $10. on Amazon.

http://diggingdogfarm.com/page2.html

As for adding maple syrup, I'd put it on right before smoking. Most who want to get a strong maple flavor use maple powder.

 

[steve8]

Sorry, forgot to say 4 lbs.
after a thorough rinse/dry put in fridge overnight on rack before smoking.

 

[bena]

 

[SmokinAl]

As said above, we all use the same calculator for bacon.

Al

 

[tropics]

As stated you need to weigh the meat and also the cure.

I have a scale for the meat that only goes to 11 lbs. from Walmart

and a gram scale

http://www.awscales.com/portable-precision-scales-01-gram/229-amw-100-digital-pocket-scale

Richie

 

[steve8]

Thanks. I'll grab a scale and hopefully report back when it's done and all is well.

 

[remsr]

No one I know of has had any luck with maple flavoring. I used a whole bottle and got nothing for flavor. Let me know if it works for you. Also I was told by an expert that sugar takes longer than salt to penetrate and they 14 days is needed for the sugar to balance things out. As you can tell I am not an expert I am just telling you what I discovered from the mistakes I made.

Randy,