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.