Makin’ some Bacon – Maple Cured

[fishrman]

I'm a sucker for a pretty picture, and in perusing the posts I saw some good ones for bacon that reminded me that I'm out of belly bacon in the freezer.  Yeah, I just did the Canadian Bacon, but you have to admit, belly bacon is a completely different beast.  And I added it to my "take on the houseboat fishing trip" list because I know it will blow the socks off my fishing buddies when they try it.

So tonight it was down to my local Ranch 99 (Asian Supermarket) where they have a really great meat and seafood counter and always have pork belly.  It is a little pricier than I'd like ($3.49/lb.) but I haven't yet taken the time to find a cheaper local supplier.  When I told the butcher there what I was doing, he dug through about 20 belly pieces to find ones that looked good with a fair amount of lean meat in them.  I walked out with 15 lbs. of belly that consisted of 6 separate pieces.

By this time it was already 9:30pm, so planned to just put them in the fridge and start on them tomorrow, but thought I'd just do a check here on the boards to review the merits of curing/smoking skin on vs. skin off.  There are a lot of good postings to this effect and what I pulled from it was:

1)   The skin is easier to remove after smoking,
2)   Leaving the skin on won't affect the curing process, you can get a complete cure skin on,
3)   You WILL lose a good deal of the benefits of smoking, flavor, as the smoke will NOT penetrate the skin and when you remove it post smoking, you are discarding all the smoky goodness you spent so much time trying to impart to the bacon.

So, I decided to remove the skin and used the wonders of the interweb to research the best way to do it.  Got some good ideas and decided to dive in.  For my skinning knife, since I don't actually have a skinning knife (yet . . .) I used my trusty NorMark fillet knife that has filleted and skinned hundreds of fish from bass to trout to salmon to tuna to halibut to stripers.  Yup, felt that knife should have some pretty good mojo from all the time it has already spent separating flesh from bone and skin.  So took the bellies out of the fridge and got to work. 



The hardest part as it turns out is getting started.  You can see in the photo below the layering of skin/fat/lean and the challenge is getting the skin while leaving all the fat and lean.


The first cuts need to be surgical, just an eighth of an inch or so deep all the way along the first edge.  Then do it about another 8 times keeping the blade of the knife fairly sharply angled upwards toward the skin.  It is hard to hold on to the skin as you are doing this, so the initial cuts can be a bit less than perfect.   I found there were areas where the fat layer got really thin, almost non-existent, and the fat there was a bit looser so tended to have a messier cut.  But once you get a couple of inches in, you can really grab onto the skin you've already separated and pull it taut.  This lets you angle that knife blade upwards such that you can see it through the skin (telling you that you are really skinning it well) and make cuts almost all the way across the belly:



While the first few inches require a lot of concentration and focus and take a bit of time, the last half of the job goes pretty quickly and with (at least for me) cleaner results.  Here's what the finished product looked like on one of the bellies:



If I had it to do over, I'd probably let the bellies chill a bit better.  I could feel a significant difference when I was skinning over a thicker part compared to a thinner one, and was able to get a much cleaner skin at those spots.

OK, got the bellies skinned, took a break to type this up, and now realize it is 11:20pm.  Yikes – better head to bed.  Will get the cure mixed up and applied tomorrow morning.    Oh yeah, I saved the skin because I may just make pork rinds following a post of Ka Honu's I came across during my skinning research.

[mikecorn.1]

Thanks for the info. :) looking forward to the other pics ;)


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[fishrman]

Movin' right along.  It was a lot of fun with six different cuts, figuring out how much each would get of the cure.  Figured out halfway through my electronic scale would do grams instead of pounds/ounces, so could have avoided the ol' convert from lb/oz to decimal, then back.  Sheeze.  Next time. 

Anywho, got the cure all mixed up and pulled the bellies out.  Slathered them with the appropriate amount of cure:





then, vacuum packed, racked and stacked into the fridge.  Let the curing period clock start ticking . . .

[Tenpoint5]

Let the FUN begin!! Try and remember to flip them every day.

[La Quinta]

Dang fishrman....99 Ranch...one of my favorite stores on the earth...I am jealous...thats where I used to get my belly...great short ribs there too...and all of the crazy stuff too...fabulous tripe too...anyhoo... :)

[fishrman]

Time has passed - one week to be specific, and the bacon has cured in the fridge.  Every day, without fail, it was flipped and perhaps massaged a bit to make sure the proper juices were flowing to all parts of the pork.  Tomorrow is the big smoke day, so this evening it was out of the plastic, a good rinse, and onto the racks for a 12+ hour refrigerator drying cycle:






Tomorrow, a 1.5 hour countertop warming to bring up to room temp, then it will be into the smoker for 2-3 hours of smoke, then the appropriate heat to get the job done.

QUESTION:  Should I sprinkle the cured slabs with a light coating of maple sugar before going into the smoker, or will that lead to too much potential burning when the bacon is cooked?


More to follow . . .

[fishrman]

Got the bacon in the smoker around 10 am set up for 2 hours of maple at 130F.   Waited around to make sure smoke was flowing  and ran an errand. Got back an hour later an found only one puck had burned. It was very well done, but still only one puck - the feeder wasn't working.  Grrrrr.   Pushed the manual feed and it worked fine. And worked fine after.   Upped the temp to 160F with the target of bringing the IT to 150F.  Well, it has been 5 hours at 160F and the IT has only risen to 122F.   Seems like a very slow rise but put the Maverick probe in the chamber and it confirms the chamber temp IS at 160F.

Does this sound right?

[fishrman]

Made the decision I was going to pull the bacon at 140F instead of the originally planned 150F, and did so at 9 pm.  This means 2 hours of smoke and 9 hours of slowwwwwwwly bringing it up.  Here's the finished product:





You can see on the second one from the bottom that I sliced a bit off to fry up and try out.  Flavor is way above store bought but I think I'd like more smoke and more maple.  I guess more smoke would just be another hour of smoke, but not sure how to get more maple flavor.  The bacon already likes to brown VERY quickly around the edges in the frying pan, and I'm afraid adding more maple syrup would only make this worse (as you probably guessed, I did not add the maple sugar per the question above for this reason).  I'm planning on trying to cook some slices in the oven at 425F to see how that does in terms of the edges, and maybe that'll provide some answers.

Now to pack it up after it cools and put most of it in the freezer for later use, but probably will slice up two slabs for immediate family consumption.   Mmmmmmm - BACON!!

[muebe]

Looks like a good load of bacon you got there ;)

[watchdog56]

Looks good.

[ghost9mm]

Now that is some real good lookin bacon...great job...

[Tenpoint5]

Fishrman the trick to Homemade Bacon is to fry it up at a lower temp. We have a lot more sugars in the homemade bacon, than they do in the injected store bought crap. If you try cooking your bacon at a slightly lower temp for a longer time, that should cure your edges turning black problem. The lower slower way will also wake everyone in house up starving. If you happen to be the first one up and making breakfast!!

[OldHickory]

This sure looks like a great load of bacon.

[jjmoney]

I guess more smoke would just be another hour of smoke, but not sure how to get more maple flavor. 

Try adding a little ground fenugreek seed into your next cure. It is the source of artificial maple and butterscotch flavorings and has a funky maply note to it.

[iceman]

Great looking batch of bacon  :P  :)