Making Bacon

[Big Guy]

Slabs just going in the smoker



done smoking 10 hrs later



chilled out overnight in the fridge



slicing



more slicing



my slicer



Vac packed and ready for the freezer



Nothing to do but enjoy the fruits of my labour

[saucisson]

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
mmmmmmm

Sorry if drooled on the keyboarddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddd
dddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddd

[Iamarealbigdog]

Mine still in the cure, trying Morton's Sugar Mix

Monday for me......

[wheels]

Here's my cold smoked bacon from the weekend:







Phil

[saucisson]

And just what is that box in the left hand picture? Looks like it has a catering gas ring stuck in the bottom of it

Did you forget to update the gas in my smoker thread ?

Dave

[wheels]

Yep, but I've not used the hot smoker yet! We've removed most of the bottom of the box to ensure a good air supply, and the air/gas mixer bit (venturi?) is outside the box. We've still got to fix a plate to seperate the burner from the anerobic smoke environment and then it's 'chocks away'. I'm a little worried about being able to maintain low enough temps for good hot smoking 'cos I went a bit mad and bought a 30,000 btu (8 kilowatt) ring!

Phil

[saucisson]

It looks like the one I had that I used to be able to run happily at 150 deg C inside a big steel water smoker when I ran it on butane but it didn't seem to like propane very much.

Dave

[wheels]

It's the other way around with mine - it doesn't like butane.

[saucisson]

Mine's about 20 years old so maybe the jet was set for butane.

Dave

[Zulululu]

Good stuff can I come around and use your slicer?

[wheels]

Course you can - It's a 12" blade Berkel RM-301CE. It was a good deal, a 'non-selling' ebay item; an office furniture firm in Birmingham had bought it in an 'office' clearance, so I made them a cheeky offer!

Phil

[Sweetcure]

Wow Phil, what superb bacon. Best ive seen in years, any chance of the recipe please, its making me hungry.

[wheels]

It's just a bog standard dry cure:

Per KG of meat
Salt 16gm
Sugar 9gm
Cure#1 - 2.5gm
Sodium Ascorbate 0.5gm
TOTAL 28gm

I added a little black pepper as well. It was 'dry cured' in a bag in the fridge, rubbed through the bag every couple of days (when I remembered) and took out after 12 days (it would have been earlier but I was busy). I dried it in the fridge while waiting for a 'nice' day to smoke it, about 4 days I think, then smoked it with a mix of oak, beech and cherry for about 18 hours - the smoke was more than a trickle, but less than a Bradley produces.

The meat was from a local pig farmer where I can get larger pigs, this one was a little smaller than normal though. The boned out loin from the half pig was 6kg.

Phil

[wallie]

Hi Phil
What does the Sodium Ascorbate do and could crushed vitamin C tablets be used in place of it?
Also I have seen a few brine recipes with Dextrose in I would like to know the purpose of that.

Thanks
wallie

[Zulululu]

Wallie over here I get ascorbate from a local health shop it is a white powder.I don't think the pills will have much in them they normally contain a lot of buffers in them.