Makin' Bacon - DIY

Grant lets us in on how easy it is to make your own bacon at home.

In the fall of 2010 I purchased a copy of "Charcuterie, The Craft of Salting, Smoking and Curing," written by Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn. I had become interested in this art many years ago. I made sausage out of the pork tenderloin trimmings when we had our restaurant, "R" Place, but had never attempted curing bacon or other meats.

I began making bacon at the beginning of 2011, and have since produced Canadian bacon, pastrami, confit of pork belly, and made stuffed bratwurst and garlic sausage in casings. My latest experiment was curing and smoking Sichuan bacon, flavored with star anise, cinnamon, cloves and Sichuan peppercorns. It is very unique, eaten by roasting chucks in the oven with a brown sugar glaze.

Bacon is a very simple process; a pork belly is rubbed with salt, sugar and spices and left to cure for about a week. It is then smoked to an internal temperature of 150 degrees. I find that I can adjust the seasoning to my own liking and the bacon shrinks very little when cooked. Most commercially prepared bacon has a salt and water mixture injected into it, so when it's fried, all of that water cooks out.

In the days before refrigeration, curing meat with salt was a way to preserve it. Time honored practices have been passed down through the ages, and even in modern times we still use the techniques because of the flavor they produce. I know very few people that will pass up bacon when it's offered.

The first challenge was to find some raw pork belly. After making a few calls to local butchers, I procured a 4 pound piece at the B & B Grocery, Meat & Deli, located on SE 6th Street in Des Moines.

First trim up the belly to a manageable size, 10 or 11 inches square. The trimmings can be used as fat in sausage, or as I usually do, fry some up and eat it. Then round up the ingredients for your cure. 

Mix up your cure. Here's the cure I use:

The Basic Dry Cure with Granulated Sugar

1 pound/450 grams kosher salt

8 ounces/225 grams sugar

2 ounces/50 grams pink salt (about 10 teaspoons)

That's the basic cure. For this slab, I added:

1/2 cup brown sugar/125 grams

2 tbsp freshly ground black peppercorns

Be sure to mix thoroughly. 

Rub the cure on all sides of the meat. You can use more or less according to your taste.

 

Place meat in a two gallon resealable bag and refrigerate for 1 week, flipping the bag over every day. 

After 1 week, rinse off the cure and allow the meat to rest in the fridge, uncovered, for at least 24 hours. This allows the cure to disburse evenly throughout the meat and develop the pelical, which allows the smoke to better adhere to the meat.

Fire up your smoker. I use cherry or apple wood.

Smoke the bacon at 200 to 250 degrees for two hours.

It should look something like this when you pull it off the smoke.

The meat needs to reach an internal temperature of 150 degrees, so I usually finish by roasting it on a rack in a 250 degree oven. Let cool, then refrigerate.

It's bacon! You can slice it or use it any way you like.

We enjoyed some with breakfast.

Really, it's an easy process and tastes so great. Please do let me know if you have any questions and I will try to get you the best answer I can!

Mmmmm..... bacon.