www.sausagemaking.org

Whats the best method of smoking bacon in a bradley smoker?

dry cure meat then after several days put into the smoker or smoke first then cure?

cold smoking sausage method using bradley smoker?

You should always cure the bacon before you smoke it. The curing should take 7-10 days depending on the thickness of the bacon. There are ways of converting a Bradley to cold smoke. Good Luck.

Hi

I have been cold smoking gammon & bacon in the Bradley since I got mine at Christmas. Not much expereince I grant you, but fresh enough in my mind.

While you _can_ cold smoke in it, using the smoke generator in place, you need to watch the temperature as it's raised quite considerably by the device (500w) which heats the bisquettes. There are two solutions. Either physically separate the smoke generator or use the CSG which is sold by MacBBQ http://www.macsbbq.co.uk/CSG.html. I have chosen the latter route, because the cost of bisquettes is very high.

Putting the cold smoke generator in the bottom of the Bradley, (with the Bradley generator present but unused) works fine, and with the ventilator just cracked open, to allow quite a smoke build up in the chamber, I found that I was happy with one single smoke load = 10 hours. I was able to smoke about 6 kg of bacon in one single batch. At about £1 a batch, that's really a very reasonable cost hit for smoking.

When smoking bacon, as Paul said, you will need to cure the bacon first. For belly, (which is about 5-6 cm thick, I make up a very simple cure (using European 0.6% Nitrited salt) of 2 parts salt to one part of sugar (raw cane, such as muscovado or demerara) and some pepper. I rub the meat with that in the proportions of 37.5 g of cure per kilo and close wrap (vacpack) and leave for a week in the fridge. After a good wash and dry, it should be left in a ventilated fridge overnight, longer in a non ventilated fridge, to let the bacon form a pellicle - at which point it can be cooked or otherwise used as "green bacon". And you then smoke it.

Hope that's reasonably clear and simple.

There is a tutorial for dry cured bacon here:

http://forum.sausagemaking.org/viewtopic.php?t=4835

You smoke it after curing. In the UK bacon is generally cold smoked. The easiest way is the CSG that Ian has linked to although you can adapt a bradley to cold smoke by placing a box between the generator and the chamber to allow the smoke to cool.

If you smoke sausage ensure you use a recipe with cure #1 (or a nitrite cure) in it for safety reasons.

Phil

Ian thanks! The info in this post was just what I was after knowing about the CSG. Cheers.

Ianinfrance wrote:Hi

I have been cold smoking gammon & bacon in the Bradley since I got mine at Christmas. Not much expereince I grant you, but fresh enough in my mind.

While you _can_ cold smoke in it, using the smoke generator in place, you need to watch the temperature as it's raised quite considerably by the device (500w) which heats the bisquettes. There are two solutions. Either physically separate the smoke generator or use the CSG which is sold by MacBBQ http://www.macsbbq.co.uk/CSG.html. I have chosen the latter route, because the cost of bisquettes is very high.

Putting the cold smoke generator in the bottom of the Bradley, (with the Bradley generator present but unused) works fine, and with the ventilator just cracked open, to allow quite a smoke build up in the chamber, I found that I was happy with one single smoke load = 10 hours. I was able to smoke about 6 kg of bacon in one single batch. At about £1 a batch, that's really a very reasonable cost hit for smoking.

When smoking bacon, as Paul said, you will need to cure the bacon first. For belly, (which is about 5-6 cm thick, I make up a very simple cure (using European 0.6% Nitrited salt) of 2 parts salt to one part of sugar (raw cane, such as muscovado or demerara) and some pepper. I rub the meat with that in the proportions of 37.5 g of cure per kilo and close wrap (vacpack) and leave for a week in the fridge. After a good wash and dry, it should be left in a ventilated fridge overnight, longer in a non ventilated fridge, to let the bacon form a pellicle - at which point it can be cooked or otherwise used as "green bacon". And you then smoke it.

Hope that's reasonably clear and simple.