ACW3
New member
I used a recipe from Tenpoint5 (he posts one several other sites) for curing part of the pork belly (with the skin still on) I bought recently. It is about three pounds in size. I used the maple syrup cure version for my first effort. I covered the pork belly with the cure and put it in a plastic covered tray for five days. I flipped the meat every 24 hours to make sure I had good coverage. I may try to leave the meat in the cure longer next time just to see how much difference it makes. After removing the meat from the tray, rinsing it thoroughly and drying it off, I placed the meat on a cooling rack, skin side down. I placed the meat in the refrigerator for 24 hours to dry prior to putting on my MAK 2 Star cold smoker. The first picture is after drying and just prior to placing in the cold smoker.
I used BBQer’s Delight Apple flavored pellets to cold smoke the meat for 3.5 hours. This is what it looked like at that point in time.
Because I was going to cook something else on my grill with a different flavor pellet, I placed the meat in the oven at 150 degrees F. until the IT of the bacon was 150 degrees F. How it is starting to look like bacon.
I let the bacon cool and then wrapped it in foil and placed in the refrigerator until the next morning. Now it was time to see how it turned out. First of all, I cut the skin off the bacon. I might do this before I cure the next batch. I lost that beautiful smoked look. I sliced a few small pieces off and put them in the pan. I think it came out really good. Not too salty. I guess I rinsed the cure off adequately. I plan to vacuum seal this and put it away for a while. Even before I cured the pork belly, I was able to convince my wife that I really needed a meat slicer. This will make it easier to cut into uniform slices in the future.
Art
I used BBQer’s Delight Apple flavored pellets to cold smoke the meat for 3.5 hours. This is what it looked like at that point in time.
Because I was going to cook something else on my grill with a different flavor pellet, I placed the meat in the oven at 150 degrees F. until the IT of the bacon was 150 degrees F. How it is starting to look like bacon.
I let the bacon cool and then wrapped it in foil and placed in the refrigerator until the next morning. Now it was time to see how it turned out. First of all, I cut the skin off the bacon. I might do this before I cure the next batch. I lost that beautiful smoked look. I sliced a few small pieces off and put them in the pan. I think it came out really good. Not too salty. I guess I rinsed the cure off adequately. I plan to vacuum seal this and put it away for a while. Even before I cured the pork belly, I was able to convince my wife that I really needed a meat slicer. This will make it easier to cut into uniform slices in the future.
Art
