Yo!

[Mikey]

Hey dudes, I was wondering if anybody can tell me what cut of pork is generally used when you buy that ham that is breaded with cornmeal in the supermarket, is it tenderloin? I thought I would use my makin bacon maple cure and follow the same directions as I do for the bacon, then smoke it for 8 hours and bread it up. It makes great eating when your out camping. Any advice is much appreciated.

[gpsmoker]

Same sort of cut of pork is used for the meal coated pork as is used in back bacon. Pork loin is what you are looking for, I believe.

When its brown it's cookin'. When its black it's done!

[Mikey]

I did a little research on this and it turns out that the pork that you see breaded in Cormeal, is actually Canadian bacon and is supposed to be cured in a sweet pickle brine and then breaded in ground peameal. The Americans version of Canadian bacon is back bacon because it is actually smoked, so I will be making the American version of Canadian bacon I guess..............who cares, as long as it tastes good right.

[Mikey]

I have a quick question for you. I am going to have the wife pick up a few pork tenderloins for the back bacon and I plan to put them along with the brine in my Food Saver Marinator. Would it be a wise to poke a bunch of holes into the meat with a fork to ensure a good cure, or is that unnecessary. I then plan to cold smoke them for 8 hours. What do you think?

[BigSmoker]

I'm no expert but I think Canadian bacon is cured not just brined.  If you are curing them you can pump in the cure solution to make the process go faster.  If you don't use some type of cure the meat won't have the pink color inside.  You would basically have smoke pork loin that has been brined.  HTH.

Jeff



Some say BBQ is in your blood, if thats true my blood must be BBQ sauce.

[Mikey]

Ya sorry thats what I meant by brine, a wet cure, the canadian bacon is wet cured and not smoked. I am going to wet cure mine and smoke it as well, it's a little better for you as far as fat goes. I figure I'm eating all kinds of things I shouldnt out camping so I would cut back once in a while and do back bacon instead of regular.

[Mikey]

So I bought 6 good sized pork tenderloins this past week and put them all into my foodsaver marinator along with the bacon cure from makin bacon, I used 2 1/2 ouces of cure to 8 cups water and then added a teaspoon paprika and 1/8 cup maple syrup. After 4 days I removed them from the marinator a breaded 2 of them in Cornmeal to make real Canadian bacon, and baked them just until done.........delicious. The other ones I sprinkled with a good amount of black pepper and cold smoked for 8 hours...........they also turned out really good, just sliced and fried em up. By the way, my smoker is getting pretty layered with splatter on the bottom sides, I know you should leave the smoke resin but it is getting a little thick with food splatter, I thought a good way to clean this might be one of those hand held steamers, no chemicals and it would probably cut that stuff pretty quick............any thoughts.