Your support in purchasing through these links enables me to keep the content train rolling. The next step is to allow the meat to dry and form a sticky pellicle on its outer surface. Simply multiply the weight of your pork belly by 453.5. If you don’t have a smokehouse, you can produce smoke by placing an iron skillet full of woodchips on an electric hotplate. Now EQ Curing does require some math, and my hatred of math was one of the fundamental reasons I became an English major, but the formula is a simple one. Curing your own bacon, at least once, is a great experience for any meat enthusiast. This redistributes the liquid which aids in the curing process. Home Made Bacon. Cure Calculator. Place the coated belly into a large Zip-Loc bag and place it flat in the refrigerator. Before modern refrigeration, meat would be left hanging in the smokehouse until it was needed, often for months at a time. A couple of differences: 1) I soak 2 hours my bacon to reduce some of the saltiness, changing the water every 30 minutes and 2) smoke it at 200-225 in the coolest part of the smoker for 4 hours. Now for the best part, cooking the bacon. As with hand slicing, cold bacon slices easier. Hoosier Hill Farm Prague Powder No.1 Pink Curing Salt, 2.5 lbs. I can’t wait to try this. At it’s most basic a cure will be made up of sugar, salt, and Pink Salt. I recommend a minimum of 8 hours, but we smoked this batch off and on over seven days. The Pink color is added so you won’t confuse it for regular salt. Good home cured bacon starts with a good piece of pig belly. [CDATA[ A good ratio to work with is 16oz Kosher Salt to 8oz Sugar to 8 teaspoons of Pink Salt. Hickory, fruit woods like apple, peach or cherry, or even oak or maple can be used to smoke the bacon. The best way to cook any bacon is in a cast iron skillet over a camp fire. Smoke at 200-225° F until bacon reaches an internal temperature of 150° F. This should take 2-3 hours depending on your smoker’s temperature and the thickness of the pork belly. I concur with the cost. A food group unto itself!!! Grilled Backstrap Satay with Peanut Dipping Sauce, Grilled Wild Turkey Breast Stuffed with Cornbread Sausage Dressing, Homemade Bourbon Vanilla Extract for Holiday Baking, How to Find the Best Meat Grinder for You, How to Make Your Own Homemade Sauerkraut in a 5-Gallon Bucket, 5 Ideas for Cleaning the Freezer Before Hunting Season. In these products Cure #1 is added directly to ground meat. The first is to hot-smoke the bacon. Additional flavors are to your taste. Cindy, Thanks for the input. // ]]> The bacon will be delicious! The amount of time spent in the cold smoker is up to you. Have you tried a brine cure method then a smoke? But it never lasts that long around our house. I use the open portions of the grill for smoking baked potato skins, Spam, salted nuts, etc. Called Equilibrium Curing, or EQ Curing, it allows the meat to cure perfectly without the fear of over salting. Ahhh, bacon! I was wondering what the cost difference is bewteen store bought and homemade. And it isn’t that hard to do. A regular old butcher may carry it but expect to have to buy a whole belly, which might be a little daunting for a first try. Cure #1 contains 6.25% of sodium nitrite and 92.75% of salt. This method uses a wet cure based on precise weights of both meat and cure ingredients. In order to do this, please note that when you click links and purchase items, in most (not all) cases I will receive a referral commission. Any smoker, pellet, electric, charcoal, wood or gas that is capable of producing smoke at a temperature of 180 to 200 degrees is perfect for smoking bacon. This handy calculator lets you plug in the weight of your pork belly, and it figures the rest for you. Use a digital thermometer to monitor the bacon's internal temperature and smoke until the bacon reaches 150 degrees. If you have a recipe and can give guidance, I would truly appreciate. American standards permit 156 parts per million (ppm) of sodium nitrite to be added to ground meat. Botulism will kill you and your family, the nitrite found in Pink Salt inhibits the growth of botulism, it is for that reason that I chose a recipe that includes Pink Salt. Called Equilibrium Curing, or EQ Curing, it allows the meat to cure perfectly without the fear of over salting. Just slice a small slice from the hanging slab and fry it up. Once the meat has cured, remove it from the brine and rinse it well under cold water. I usually make 20lbs at a time. After bacon is done curing, remove it from the bag, give it a rinse to remove excess salt, and pat it dry. Very cool! Nitrite has been used in curing meat for as long ago as the 1500’s in the form of saltpeter, so it isn’t something that can be easily dismissed. Next comes the smoke. You are shooting for a nice uniform coating. Check out this dry cure method of makin’ bacon, I think it is what you are looking for https://survivalsherpa.wordpress.com/2015/06/26/makin-bacon-how-to-dry-cure-pork-belly/ . I find Pops6927’s recipe from the Smoking Meat forums to be a great place to start.. Turn the soon-to-be bacon every other day. chunks, leave the skin on and remove after smoking, vacuum pack food saver and freeze. Unlike dry curing, saltiness won’t build up in the meat with extended cure time. Cook the home cured bacon just like you always have the store-bought stuff. When the flavor is right, your bacon is finished. Each time a new batch was added, the existing hanging meat would be smoked again, with each round producing a smokier flavor. I have been making home made bacon for a while (cure with pink salt plus smoking). I strive to bring you the best EDC Knife and Gear Reviews, Small Scale Homesteading, Common Sense Preparedness, and Dutch Oven Recipes. The salt and sugar are common ingredients but Pink Salt is the 800 lb gorilla in the room. Can’t help it, I am a bacon junky. Also love peppering the cure mix at about day 3 then coating it during smoking. My next bacon project is going to be a honey cure and a hickory smoke. We love it and give a couple of pound for Christmas gifts. Plus nitrite helps to keep cured meat a rosy color which is just nicer than a gray slab of bacon. Affiliate Disclosure: I am grateful to be of service and bring you content free of charge. The other conversion you might need is grams of water to liquid measurement. I add some “flavors” during the process, my favorite being maple syrup,and brown sugar,adding the sugar at the midway point of curing, using 1/2 cup per lb. ©2020 Jordan Outdoor Enterprises, Ltd. All rights reserved. Rinse the bacon well and pat dry with paper towels. If I am doing a couple bellies at a time, I will figure my cure for the entire weight and place both bellies into the same container with all of the curing brine. I’m glad I asked. Wait for it to cool, wrap, and place it in the refrigerator. This takes into account the salt in any cure. Pink salt isn’t Himalayan salt. I'm a 43 year old husband, father, life long outdoorsman, and have 20+ years experience in infrastructure construction. My method of making bacon needs to be refrigerated or frozen to keep. Mary,