Homemade bacon
 

Anyone ever made it?

My brother got me America's Test Kitchen's DIY cookbook (they're the peeps that do Cook's Illustrated), and it includes a good lookin' recipe for homemade bacon that they swear beats the pants off most anything you can buy... plus, since you have it in slab form (which seems to be pretty hard to find unless you order it), you can do nice things like lardons.

Anyhoo, after wandering all over the butcher shops and grocery stores in Montgomery (only one could get it, and it was $8/pound), I asked the meat manager at Publix if he could get any, and he said yes. And it was only going to be $3.19/pound. I went to pick it up this morning and the guy had made a mistake - my 5-pound order was 11.44 pounds, but it was marked at $2.69/pound. The manager said he knew that was more than I wanted, but if I'd take the whole thing, he'd take another 40 cents off per pound. :rockon:

So I have 11 pounds of pork belly in my fridge, some pink salt on the way for the cure, and a box full of apple wood in my shed. And bacon will be made.

They also have a recipe for pancetta, which I'll attempt at some point, too.

i'd put my money that Mo has.

brother in-law smokes his own bacon



not sure if that is 'making it' or just smoking it. :shrug:

Well, to make it bacon you do have to do stuff to it, otherwise it'd just be smoked pork belly.

i used to smoke the belly when i cooked whole hog bbq .. id take tyhe bellies off let em kool out in brownsugar brime then rinse kool longer then slice up .. was real yummy .. i used any fruit wood plus oak .....

One of my friends makes his own and it's amazing. Also delicious is thick cut (like little nuggets) smoked then grilled. Holy shit. Bacon nuggets.

You need to cure it first.

love it.
never made it.
mo should be able to help, i bet.
sec

Best thread ever

You talkin' to me?

(I've ordered pink salt for the cure, but don't have it yet.)

Just a comment. :)

Every recipe I've seen for bacon has a method for curing. Like 7 days.

The Cook's Illustrated one I'm using is 7-10 days. Need to find maple sugar, too.

I have a friend who smokes his own bacon. He doesn't have a meat slicer though and cutting it is a pain in the butt though.

This just proves how good it is to eat LOW on the hog.

I used to help my grandparents make bacon when we'd butcher hogs. Totally worth the grief. Here's your goal: Burger's Bacon

No posts yet about how homemade bacon gives us a lardon? Tsk, tsk.

ROFL

Rep, good sir.

When you cook it, put it in the oven cold on a foiled tray, turn the oven on to 300 degrees and let it cook for 20-24 min until perfectly golden brown.

It literally melts in your mouth.

That's how I do my regular bacon. With the recipe I'm using, you smoke the bacon to 150. They say after that, the bacon is ready to eat, so you can eat it cold or put it in a skillet (or oven) and cook as you normally would.

I've never cured pork belly, but I cure pork loin into back bacon often. It's a 5-7 day cure, I've never used pink salt, I use Tender Quick. I smoke it at 150 degrees to around 145/150 internal.

Hmm. CI says not to use Tender Quick, but they don't say why.

I can't eat it any other way now. I can't stand the non-uniform cooked level of bacon in a pan. This is my weekend breakfast every weekend.

http://i.imgur.com/Wulk2.jpg

There are several pink salt/tender quick debates all over the Internet. I use tender quick out of convenience of availability and have always been happy with how my cures have turned out.

One plate??? That's just an appetizer for my bacon dinner!:drool:

Only 9 pieces of bacon can fit on my tray at one time or else I would make the whole package.

I bought a pound of pink salt on Amazon. That should last me about 400 pounds of meat.

If you have extra and would like to donate to feed the children, you could send me some and I would take care of your donation. :D

Burgers is about 3 miles down the road from me. If you can recreate that, your gonna be in hog heaven~

I'll be starting my cure tomorrow. I didn't order quite enough maple sugar, but I added some grade B dark amber real maple syrup to some sugar (like you would for homemade brown sugar) and did a side-by-side taste comparison and feel confident it'll taste great. So next Sunday I should be smoking my pork belly and have an 11-pound slab of bacon!

Thank you for reminding me of bacon. I was getting hungry. Now I know what I'm eating.

Bacon is high in cholesterol. It will choke your arteries down and KILL you. I'd advise eating a Turkey breast instead.

I have a customer that makes his own bacon and brings me a slab every couple weeks, needless to say he usually gets free oil changes.


On another note I also have a guy who makes the absolute best deer and beef jerky. Doesn't dry it all the way out oh my ****ing god. He hooks us up too. I love those guys

You can't jack off a turkey though.

Why. It's on the other end from the beak

**** me, seriously? Bacon nuggets? It's on now.

Yep, you can't do bacon nuggets (lardons) unless you get it as a slab. That pre-sliced shit just don't work.

I just told my son about the bacon nuggets thing.

First he was all:

http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/__..._Derp_Face.png


And then he went:

http://clarksvillewtf.com/wp-content...rus_bucket.jpg

SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY!

Bacon rules. FTW!

I was in the DC forum arguing about God and guns then bacon.

How big is his pipe?

You're going to die anyway. May I suggest you die with bacon on your breath?

That's kinda personal.......

I withdraw the question. :p

Interesting, I may have to try this myself. Just looked up the price for pork belly here and found it for $2.29 lb at the university's butcher shop.

If I have 10 pieces of bacon and my friend wants two pieces of bacon, how many pieces do I have left? Correct, I still have 10 because you're not getting any.

Never heard of that. Thanks. I'll have to try that next weekend.

Cool. I usually have a thick-cut bacon and have to let it go closer to 24. If I buy really cheap, thin bacon, 20 is enough. I'm about to go make some at halftime.

Best way to make bacon. I learned that trick on Good Eats (Alton Brown).

Lol. Great post
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Well, what do you have if your friend steals two pieces of bacon?

Ten pieces of bacon and a dead body.

I learned it from someone on r/keto. That must be where they got it from.

I accidentally bought some baby bitch bacon (thin sliced) so I was able to get like 15 pieces on the tray compared to the 9 I usually get. I don't know wtf I was thinking. I think it was on sale for $1.50.

What are you wearing?

The bacon trials have begun.

Spice rub made up of maple sugar, Kosher salt, peppercorns, thyme, bay leaf and pink salt.

http://imageshack.us/scaled/medium/850/img3958f.jpg

I learned very early on you must have a fine tip and a very sharp knife for skinning the pork belly. This is not hard, but patience is a virtue.

http://imageshack.us/scaled/medium/5/img3959j.jpg

Leftovers (skin).

http://imageshack.us/scaled/medium/33/img3960s.jpg

I don't have a big enough pan to fit the whole pork belly, so I split it between two. Now, we wait. It'll sit in the fridge for the next 7-10 days and cure; I'll flip them every other day.

http://imageshack.us/scaled/medium/715/img3962i.jpg

Mmmmm, bacon.

http://imageshack.us/scaled/medium/692/img3964nq.jpg

Does it make a mess in the oven?

I tried this method this week, and it was not messy at all. Once the bacon was removed, I carefully took out the foil, and there was no grease at all on the pan. Let the pan cool, gave it a quick rinse, and that was it. Oven looked good on the inside. I imagine some grease will wind up sizzling its way into the oven, but if you clean your oven semi-regularly, I imagine you would be fine.

I worked at the main dining hall of the college down here and they cooked ALL of their bacon that way, and I'm talking about a metric ****ing shit ton and there was never any problem. That's the way I always cook bacon. if you don't want to wait 24 minutes you can just put that shit on the bottom rack and turn the oven on broil too.

No, thats why you put foil on the cookie sheet, to collect the fat. Once you're done, there should be a considerable amount of bacon grease, which you can pour into a glass jar.
Hmm...sounds sorta messy unless you poured the bacon grease out first...I usually have a lot of grease and couldn't even think of taking the foil off unless I poured it into a jar.

Me too. Fat goes in a jar and then in the fridge for use later.

It certainly could have been messy, but the trash can was close by, so I basically took off the foil and slid it straight into the trash can.

Partially freeze it to cut it. Lots easier.

Or use a good meat slicer. I like this one:

http://www.amazon.com/Victorinox-12-...I1YWPTMB58APFT

FMB, you've got to save a little for just grillin as an appetizer.

I have 11 pounds curing. I don't think that'll be a problem.

MO has yet to give us his grandaddy's recipe. We're waiting.

We've gotten in the habit of mixing up a pound of fresh sausage just about every morning. I'm a local hero! (at least in my house)

I wonder if he could take it to a local specialty meat shop and pay them to slice it.

Do you put the bacon on the foil or on the rack above the foil?

Rack.

Thanks, that was what I thought, but I was reading it differently.

Tell me more about these "bacon nuggets" please. What is the process?

Also, are you going to make chicharonnes with that pork skin?

wait, you guys are saying to put directly on the oven rack? Or some sort of rack that stands on your cookie sheet/foil?

I'm a little slow. :(

Here is the order of how it should be from bottom to top.

Oven Rack, Cookie Sheet, foil, bacon.

God I wish I had the time to do this. Can't wait to see how it comes out.

You are my idol.

That's what I thought originally.

they're saying something else though it seems.

I don't know what they're talking about, but I'm talking about cooking Bacon in the oven.

Yep. I'm doing it that way next time. I used to only cook a big breakfast maybe once or twice a month on the weekend, but my girlfriend loves breakfast and is always hooking up some good shit on weekends. I'm usually stuck cooking the bacon though. And cooking sausage/making gravy for B&G.

Not how I do it. Oven rack, cookie sheet, foil... INSIDE the cookie sheet, put a cooling rack like this. Then put the bacon on the cooling rack. Keeps it from sitting in the bacon grease.

Day 5. The pork belly has lost quite a bit of liquid, which has turned the cure into a marinade of sorts:

http://imageshack.us/scaled/medium/3...9808627235.jpg

I have 11 pounds of this stuff. That's a lot of bacon. I'm thinking of smoking half, and finishing the other half in the oven for unsmoked bacon (which is a more of a UK thing).

Thoughts?

I'm thinking host a chiefsplanet bbq?