Homemade Bacon
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Homemade Bacon

Servings

1 KG

Prep time

30

minutes
Cooking time

1

minute
Total time

1

hour 

10

minutes

Ingredients

  • 1 KG piece of pork belly

  • 1 cup dark brown sugar

  • 1/3 cup kosher salt

  • 12 grams (~1 1/2 TSP) pink salt (or Ready Cure in Canada) (Measure this using scales, do not poison yourself!)

  • 1/4 cup Real Maple Syrup

  • 4 TBSP Cracked Peppercorns

Directions

  • Using a sharp knife, remove the skin from the belly. Don’t play with the pig nipples, that’s just weird. OK, go ahead and pinch one.
  • Discard the skin
  • In a bowl, mix up the salt, sugar, cure and pepper.
  • In a Large Ziplock Bag, place the belly
  • Pour in the dry cure powder, coating all sides of the belly
  • Pour maple Syrup into the bag, and mush it around
  • Store in the fridge for 7 days.
  • (As the cure works, more liquid will be drawn out of the belly, this starts within the first hour)
  • Every day, flip the belly over to allow the released liquids and cure to even coat.
  • Over the course of the week, you should notice the bellies firming up quite a bit as a result of the curing process.
  • After 7 days, remove from bags and rinse the cure off with cold water
  • Pat dry with paper towels and place belly on a wire rack
  • Back in the fridge over night to form a tacky pellicle on the surface (needed for the smoke to stick)
  • Smoke on your cooker, at your desired pace till the bellies hit about 150 degrees internal temp.
  • Let the bacon cool completely for easier slicing, but go ahead and cut off some NOW and fry it up!
  • It should be good a couple weeks in the fridge, if you can last that long.

Notes

  • I fry mine at a low temp to release much of the fat, but this stuff is so good, you WANT the fat in there. Try a couple of thick slices….this is nothing like what you are used to buying in the store.
  • Don’t have a smoker? Go buy one. In the meanwhile, you can add some liquid smoke to the maple syrup, and then use your oven to get this up to 150 degrees.
  • I like to cool smoke mine (180 degrees) for a couple of hours, using hickory, before raising the temp of the cooker up to 224 to finish it off for the last hour of so.