I started making my own bacon about a year ago, after reading this recipe on Michael Ruhlman's excellent blog.
Home-Cured Bacon (adapted from Charcuterie)
—Order five pounds of fresh pork belly from your grocery store, the pork guy at your farmers market, or from a local butcher shop.
—Buy a box of 2-gallon zip-top bags if you don’t have a container big enough to hold the belly.
—Mix the following together in a small bowl:2 ounces (1/4 cup Morton or Diamond Crystal coarse kosher) salt
2 teaspoons pink curing salt #1 (I use this DQ Cure from Butcher-Packer, $2)
4 tablespoons coarsely ground black pepper
4 bay leaves, crumbled
1 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
1/4 cup brown sugar or honey or maple syrup
5 cloves of garlic, smashed with the flat side of a chef’s knife
2 tablespoons juniper berries, lightly crushed (optional)
5 to 10 sprigs fresh thyme (optional)
—Put your belly in the zip-top bag or on a sheet tray or in a plastic container. Rub the salt and spice mixture all over the belly. Close the bag or cover it with plastic wrap, and stick it in the refrigerator for seven days (get your hands in there and give the spices another good rubbing around midway through).—After seven days, take it out of the fridge, rinse off all the seasonings under cold water and pat it dry.—Put it on a sheet tray and put it in the oven (put it on a rack on a sheet tray if you have one) and turn the oven on to 200 degrees F. (if you want to preheat the oven, that’s fine, too). Leave it in the oven for 90 minutes (or, if you want to measure the internal temperature, until it reaches 150 degrees F.).—Let it cool and refrigerate it until you’re ready to cook it. But I know. You won’t be able to wait. So cut off a piece and cook it. Taste it, savor it. Congratulations! It’s bacon!Notes: If you don’t have five pounds of belly, either guesstimate salt based on the above or, if you have a scale, multiply the weight of the belly in ounces or grams by .025 and that’s how many ounces or grams of salt you should use.
This is basically bacon made with a savory pancetta cure. In fact, if you rolled the belly up after curing and hung it (under the right conditions) for two weeks, you'd have pancetta. If you like a sweeter bacon, Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn's meat bible Charcuterie has a fantastic recipe for Maple-Cured Smoked Bacon. You can riff off of the basic cure recipe and add whatever additional flavoring you like. I'm particularly fond of a healthy dose of Sriracha.
While you can make perfectly serviceable bacon in the oven, there is no substitute for smoking it. Before throwing the belly in the smoker, you need to rinse it and let it sit uncovered in the fridge for a day or two. This allows for a pellicle to form. I don't claim to understand the science, but the pellicle is basically a thin coating of protein that forms on the surface of the meat that allows smoke to adhere. Once you've allowed sufficient pellicle-forming time, throw the belly on your smoker (skin side down) with your favorite hardwood and let it smoke at 225 degrees until the bacon reaches an internal temperature of 150 degrees. I use the Big Green Egg loaded with either apple or hickory wood.
For packaging, I highly recommend investing in a vacuum sealer. I'm fond of this one, which is cheap. You will also drive yourself crazy trying to slice the bacon with a regular chef's knife. A meat slicer works best here, but a slicing knife such as this one also performs nicely.
One final note: though it can be hard to find pork belly at your local supermarket, you can generally find it at Your Dekalb Farmer's market (go early before they cut it into smaller pieces), Whole Foods, Buford Highway Farmer's Market, and pretty much any Asian market. I've recently come across a small butcher in South Georgia that raises his own hogs, which has produced some incredible bacon.
So, that's it. For a small monetary and time commitment, you can produce a superior version of one of the greatest foods on earth! Good luck.
Dave
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