Makin' Bacon

The "Two Eggs" of the blog title refer to my two Big Green Eggs.  Technically, one is a large, and one is a small.  Both are great cookers.  I fire one up probably 4 evenings a week when the weather is nice - and once a week when the weather isn't.

One of my favorite things to make is homemade bacon.  It's simple and delicious.  I use a couple of different techniques; I'll cover a bit about the dry cure here and review some of the smoking techniques.

Curing bacon requires 4 ingredients: pork belly, salt, sugar, and nitrite. Ruhlmann's basic cure is:

• 450 g salt
• 225 g sugar
• 50g pink salt, aka Prague powder #1.  

Note that the pink salt is NOT Himalayan pink salt, and it is NOT Prague powder #2.  (Also note that there is no bacon without nitrite.  The "uncured" bacon you see in the grocery store was made with nitrites, possibly from celery. Since the exact amount is unknown, it can't be called "cured.")

Back to the bacon.  Get yourself a pork belly.  Costco sells them, your meat counter can order them. Slice it into pieces that will fit into gallon Ziploc bags.  Add cure: a 5% by weight ratio of cure to meat is plenty.  Seal the bags and place in the fridge. 

Once a day, turn the pieces over and redistribute the fluid that's coming out.  Curing takes about 7 days for an inch or so of thickness.  Give them a rinse at the end of the week.

At the end of the week, slice a piece or two off the end. Fry it up.  Notice how it turns red, just like real bacon!  The nitrite gives it the color and snappy taste and To me, this cure will usually turn out too salty.  Feel free to soak the slabs in cold water. Change the water every few hours and the salt should settle down after a few changes.

(Food with salt content over 2% typically tastes too salty. A great alternative to this dry cure method is called the equilibrium cure.  With an equilibrium cure, the exact amount of salt, sugar and nitrite in the final product can be controlled.)

At this point you could be done.  But you could also smoke the bacon. Cold smoking is not recommended, as the temperatures will typically be in the "danger zone" of 40-140 degrees. You may say, "but the bacon is cured, and I'm applying smoke, what could go wrong?"  The answer is that I don't know and I'm not going to encourage you to find out.

So, most people opt for hot smoking.  Build a small fire in the egg and add your favorite smoking wood.  Fruit woods like apple and cherry are great choices.  Set up the egg for indirect cooking and smoke the meat until the internal temperature of the bacon is 150-160 degrees.  Fry it up as usual but keep an eye on it: it's partially cooked already.

Since I mentioned not doing something dangerous, now is where I advise do as I say, not as I do. I figure if food is kept safe at temps below 40 degrees, why not smoke at that temperature?  I freeze the slabs of bacon until I'm ready for smoking.  Then, the small egg gets started with a small fire.  Very little smoking wood is needed - a chunk or two is fine.  Three, here, had plenty left over after a few hours of smoke. The platesetter is needed to deflect the heat.  

The top of the small egg is connected to the intake of the large egg with standard flexible drier hose. Blue painters tape holds it all in place.  

The cold slabs of bacon go into the large.  Most of the heat should be confined to the small egg and any that gets out will be dissipated by the drier hose. Without the platesetter inside the small, you may melt the first few inches of drier hose.  Ask me how I know....

Here's some slabs of bacon on an Adjustable Rig.  Definitely not necessary to have an AR, but it does let you load lots of stuff into the egg all at once.  Great product.

A few hours of smoke should be plenty.  I like to vacuum seal the slabs at this point and throw them back in the freezer. This lets the smoke distribute and mellow.

Slicing the bacon is done by hand, with a long slicing knife.  I use a standard 12" Victorinox with a fibrox handle.  If you are lucky enough to have a capable motorized slicer, I am jealous.  Sometimes your local butcher may slice for you, in exchange for your continued support.

This is sliced hot smoked bacon:

And this is sliced cold smoked bacon:

Finally, a one-egg way to do the smoking.  This is a styrofoam cooler, with trays for bacon slabs.  I held up the trays with long metal skewers.  I did this in the summertime, and kept the inside cool(ish) with ice.

If you're interested in bacon, and charcuterie in general, check out Ruhlman and Polcyn's book for a good intro.