[bluesman]

That's a beautiful sight!

Home Smoked Bacon rocks!

Yea Tom... I want to follow a similiar process.  Salt cure + cold smoke is the way to go for this piece of meat. It's a process that can work well if you have fine tuned cold smoke capabilities.

[tschmidlin]

I've done a lot with cold smoking cheese, so I'll use the same process.  I just need to build a bigger box, I only do at most 2.5 lbs of cheese at a time.  Hmmm, cherry smoked bacon . . .

[onthekeg]

I'm not a gambler - I lack the patience and get bored too easily.  I was a favorite with guys I worked with who liked to start off their keg parties with Texas Holdem - after a few hands I'd go all in just so I could go do something else.  It was only a $5 buy in anyway   If I'm gambling I expect to lose, and I do lose, so I don't do it.

I still want to get a pork belly and make bacon though, so back to my original question . . . is it really as easy as rubbing it with a mix for a few days, then smoking it?  That's it?  No aging or anything?  I'll go do some reading, just wondering how the OP, onthekeg, did it.

Sorry for the delay in answering your question Tom
I rubbed the bacon two weeks ago with Sea Salt and a nitrate mix.  For the 3 slabs I had, I ended up using 1oz of Prague Powder mixed in with 1lb of salt as well as a couple oz of maple sugar.  I then poured some maple syrup over the slabs and rubbed that in as well.  Put them into a rubbermaid tub which was then put into my keezer.  I had to take a couple kegs out for the two weeks it was curing.     (Its a 23 cu ft unit so there was still cold beer.)

Every couple of days I would drain off the juice in the bottom of the tub and put it back in the keezer.  I don't have the ability to cold smoke properly so these were smoked for 6 hours at 180, as cold as I can go.  I sliced these all up yesterday at my parents as he has a meat slicer.  Turned out pretty good!

[nicneufeld]

6 hours at 180...do you think it might be fully cooked?  If you took a temp and you hit 160 by the end of it you could try a little shaving of it au naturale!

[onthekeg]

6 hours at 180...do you think it might be fully cooked?  If you took a temp and you hit 160 by the end of it you could try a little shaving of it au naturale!

I did eat some raw when I sliced it last night and didn't get sick.  I should have probed it, but I just let the smoker run out of fire overnight and it was cold and partially frozen in the morning when I woke up.     I was lazy, LOL.

[tschmidlin]

Sounds great though!  Did you flip it at all when it was in your keezer?

[bluesman]

Here's an informative article on curing/smoking bacon from the U of Missouri.

http://extension.missouri.edu/publications/DisplayPub.aspx?P=G2528

[tschmidlin]

Great info, thanks.

[alikocho]

The "official' sow belly on the Chicago Board of Trade is 18 lbs.

Did you pick that up from watching Trading Places?

 
 Tubercle used to trade on CBOT ,CME & NYME; cotton, corn, sugar, soybeans,& Canadian dollars. IIRC, sow bellies are actually traded on CME (Chicago Mercantile Exchange).

 Don't do this with the grocery money. Its like going to the track. If you can't afford to lose it, don't bet it.

  Tubercle started out with $10,000 in the account and 5 years later ended up with $9,800 in the account. At one time it was up 9x and another time it was 1/2.

 It was actually fun and I learned a lot. Lost a little sleep from time-to-time

I remember that. Used to trade financial options on LIFFE. Some nights were sleepless, but at least it was someone else's money. And yeah, pork belly's on the CME.

[onthekeg]

Sounds great though!  Did you flip it at all when it was in your keezer?

Yes every time I took it out to drain the juice out of the bottom I would rearrange them.  I rubbed more salt on it the first time I took them out as well.

[euge]

So how does one get an uncured pork belly? At the butcher? Seems to me it would be special order- what would be a fair price per pound?

[tschmidlin]

So how does one get an uncured pork belly? At the butcher? Seems to me it would be special order- what would be a fair price per pound?

Good question.  My butcher makes bacon and sells it for $5 per lb, so I'm guessing I can get fresh pork belly for less than $4 per lb.  I don't know how much less yet though, I haven't asked.

[roguejim]

http://cowgirlscountry.blogspot.com/2008/12/making-bacon-part-3-cold-smoking.html

[oscarvan]

Tubercle started out with $10,000 in the account and 5 years later ended up with $9,800 in the account. At one time it was up 9x and another time it was 1/2.

Two years of leveraged ETF's..... up 1000%, down to 10%......pulled the ripcord when it passed by break even again.....put my money in brewing equipment....

[bluesman]

http://cowgirlscountry.blogspot.com/2008/12/making-bacon-part-3-cold-smoking.html

I've been to this blogspot many times.

Cowgirl's blogspot is the shazizzle!