Added black pepper to the cure. Also just remembered I forgot to add the cure part of the cure. Will get that in there tonight.

So my goal when I decided to try making bacon was to try to make my favorite commercial bacon. First try was waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too salty and I had to mess with it a bunch and well it was not all that great.

This time I cut the cure time to 6.5 days instead of 14 and used some tender quick to actually cure it. According to the smoking folk my first batch was salted pork because I did not use nitrates. This time it was 75% salt and 25% sugar instead of 50-50%. It is still a bit salty though, but edible.

The color before cooking was beautiful, but it went really light pink to almost gray when cooked. 8 hours of apple wood smoke on a cold day. I used no lump charcoal and just let the wood chunks slowly smolder and added new ones about every hour. The smoke is there, but it needs more. I think I will try putting the 3 remaining slabs in the smoker for another day.

SO I headed to Ideal a few times and asked for pork belly and they and I misunderstood that I wanted pork side. Anyway I am curing this batch and only curing for one week. Plus salt is 70% while sugar is 30% plus 1 oz of cure. I have learned from the last time. This one is going to rule, swears.

So I learned a ton with this whole bacon making experience. Main lesson: Be careful how much salt you use.
Man it was literally innedible. The salt burned the lips and I could only make it through two pieces. I asked over on the smoking meat forums and they said I was kinda hosed. I decided to soak the three bellies I had not sliced yet to suck out some of the salt. 24 hours and two changes of water and it is perfect now. Pic above is just two of the slabs all cut up. It is really good. My next batch is going to kick arse.

There are a lot of sites that focus on bacon. I was fanatic about bacon way before it was cool. And I made my own bacon. Suck on that bacon centric websites

Just a slight update for now. I sliced some up and ate a few pieces with a friend that stopped by.
I was worried about the color for a while when curing, soaking, and putting it on the smoker grate. The smoke brought out the color really well as you can see in the pic above.

The jist:
- great smoke aroma and a good smoke bite in the flavor.
- had the oily feel and became translucent like other uber smoked bacon I have had.
- Color was a dark brown after being cooked, but went very pale once it hit the pan.
- Sweetness is there and made it caramelize and burn in the pan.
- very salty. Like scary salty. Seriously it is salty. WOW.

Mission severely accomplished though. I wanted to recreate my favorite bacon and it is so close it is scary.

This has turned out to be quite the experiment. I am two weeks in and am about ready to taste my bacon for the first time.

I never weighed the pork bellies, but I am guessing 20 pounds easy. $30
Two weeks of cure in kosher salt and brown sugar. $10
lump charcoal / smoking wood chunks / propane around $15

So $55 for around 10 – 15 pounds of killer bacon. Just about market price for your standard water cured bacon. Good bacon runs about $9 a pound. This should be really good bacon and worth every penny.

These have been curing in kosher salt and brown sugar for almost 12 days. About every two days I pour the liquid out and repack / rub the slabs with fresh and reused salt and sugar. The pretty red is gone. I am doing this all natural so no preservatives and the red color is only visible in a few spots. Mostly where it has sat in the liquid. There is a slight odor, but it is not a rotten smell, a slightly pork juice aroma and the brown sugar smell is the most prominent. The liquid has been coming out less and less. I bet a good quarter gallon to half a gallon of juice has been poured off.

This weekend I will rinse, scrub, and soak the slabs to pull some of the salt out and uncrust the outside. I still have to rig up my cold smoker idea which will involve a computer fan running off a battery, my old bullet smoker, some metal flexible tubing for dryer vents, my big smoker, and possibly a hot plate.

Wow, this is 12 hours later. It was all soaked. Did some research and found out I should be doing 4 pounds of salt to every 1 pound of sugar. I had done 3 pounds of salt to 2 pounds of sugar. I will adjust accordingly. The juice should lessen as I go and I am still sitting on a bunch of salt and sugar. No nitrates will be added.

Read about how cured pork should ba allowed to age for about 5 month, but no way I can wait that long. A coworker of Theresa said we can borrow their industrial slicer. They going to get some bacon out of the deal. Win win.

After finding the perfect bacon I have decided to try and replicate it. Last night begins 2 weeks of a dry cure consisting of only brown sugar and salt. That gives me two weeks to come up with a way to rig my old bullet smoker up to be the smoke chamber with flexible vent ducting to cold smoke for a few days in the big smoker. It should be awesome.

Anyone have an industrial slicer I can use for 30 minutes?