Bacon, a Beginning
I have seen a cousin posting about home-curing bacon and got interested. I like bacon. I like cooking. Seems a match made in the kitchen. He gave me the basics. I researched some more. Settled on generally following the recipe in Ruhlman’s Charcuterie. The results have been outstanding; we are hooked.
Once I had all the necessary curing ingredients (Salt, Curing Salt, Corn Sugar, Big zip-close bags), I went to a local butcher and got a pork belly. This belly had the skin on. Removing that was quite a lot of work for this first go. It will certainly take me a few times to figure out the best way and the best knife to use to do this. Or start getting the butcher to do it for me. Cracklins sound like a good thing to make, though.
Mixed the cure, coated half the belly, put in a bag, put the bag in the refrigerator, and waited. The other half went to the freezer. After about 10 days, with a bag-flip in the middle, the curing belly came out got washed, dried, and smoked. Bacon.
Field Notes:
5Sept2020
4lbs cured with just the curing mix
15Sep Smoked with hickory and apple
Very nice bacon flavor. Mary says this is the only bacon I can make (“Don’t start doing anything weird to it!”)