Smoking Techniques > Curing

Ground and formed bacon

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Northern_Smoke:
I was on Facebook the other day looking at posts from a group I follow and came across "Ground and Formed bacon". This seemed interesting. As it turns out there is a company that makes a mix that you add to ground pork and wild game. The idea is to use up any kind of meat to make a bacon like product. I got to thinking that it wouldn't be hard to replicate this so i gave it a try. I had 1.5 pound of elk left in my freezer and about 3 pounds of pork shoulder from some sausages I had made. Into the grinder it all went for a medium grind. I based the bacon seasoning mix on how I cure pork bellies. It's just a simple salt, brown sugar, cure and maple syrup mix. Although I did add some NFDM to help with moisture and binding. Next I put it all in the kitchen aid and spun it around for about 3 or so minutes. I had some disposable aluminium pans on hand which I lined with cling wrap so the meat would come out easier. This was all assembled and packed as densely as I could get it. It then went for a 24 hr chill in the fridge.

I smoked it as I normally do back. Same times, temps and smoke. Unfortunately I do not have pictures up until this point but it pretty much looked like any other kind of sausage picture.

I let it sit over night once I was done smoking it and this morning we cut some and fries it up. I was afraid it would have much more if a ham flavour but to my surprise it was like bacon. It had the texture somewhat of Turkey bacon but the flavour of pork.

Everyone that tasted it has called it a winner so it may be something that happens a little more often around here.

Salmonsmoker:
Great post N_S. Interesting.

ragweed:
Very nice, N_S.  Gonna try for sure using goose in place of elk.  Thanks for posting.

TMB:
Looks really good, would just pork 20/80 work?   Would I need more fat?

Northern_Smoke:
I would think 80/20 would work out nicely I am sure my mix was much leaner than that using the elk and it turned out nice.

If anyone is interested in quantities they are as follows:
Salt 2.5%
Brown sugar 1%
Cure 0.25%
And here is where things get "iffy". I had my kids helping and they were dumping the ingredients in before I could get weights on a few of them so the maple syrup was 1/4 cup for the 4.5 pounds of meat and the NFDM was 1/2 cup. I will be making this again so I will get an accurate weight so I can keep with this style of measurement. It just makes it easy for the excel file to auto calculate based on the weight of the meat. Anyways, this produced a sweeter bacon than most store bought but we liked it. If I were to do it again and want saltier I don't think I would increase the salt but rather cut the maple syrup or brown sugar back. But any way you look at this. It is a keeper in our recipe book :)

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