Hi all, I am in the process of making some hillybilly bacon using phone guy's recipe. This is day seven so I opened the ziplock bag and rinsed them off and they are currently soaking in cold water. I noticed that some of the surface is a nice bright red color and parts of it are a darker brown color. Is this anything to be concerned about?
Mike
I would not be too concerned about it. I have had some where the coloring was not uniform, but still tasted fantastic! Smoke it!
There could be few reasons for this, such as the butt is made up of different muscles groups and some muscles have more myoglobin which will increase the red color, or that area may not have cured (some causes could be it wasn't turned enough, or it may have been exposed to a cooler area of the refrigerator).
Since you are going to be smoking/cooking at 200°F, and fully cook the meat there are no food safety issues. After it has been fully cooked and sliced; it that meat is grayish or brownish in color that means that area did not fully cured. It is still save to eat, but treat it as fresh cooked pork.
Thanks for the info guys. I went ahead and smoked it. I sliced it up and had some for breakfast this morning. The slices all had a nice uniform color and texture to them. They were pretty darn good.
Mike