Thanks to the VWBB I finally got some fresh pork belly.

You guys have given me a ton of suggestions where I might be able to find belly (mexican or asian markets) and I exhausted all possibilities...I thought. I knew I could get a case, but what to do with 60 lbs of belly? Convince two other local, VWBB contributors to go in on the case with me, of course. Todd Randall and Bill Hays were nice enough to each take 20 lbs, and we had a nice time meeting each other at the butcher shop.

Since all three of us are attempting to cure and smoke our own bacon, Todd suggested we start a thread to keep each other informed of our progress.

My initial proof of concept run involved 1/3 lb piece done the Ruhlman way. I wasn't particularly excited about it so I decided to take a different approach with this whole belly.

I thought this recipe looked interesting since it involves a 3 day brine instead of a 7-10 day dry cure.

I used the middle third off of a whole belly (about 5 lbs) and halved the brine amounts. I dunked it this evening, which means it'll come out sat, dry until sun and go on the wsm sometime sun.



notice the cool pink color of the brine.

MMMMMMMMM BACON!!!

J its lookin good so far... Can't wait to see how it comes out!

I'm doing a basic dry cure and the Maple cure, both from Ruhlman's book. These are quarters of a belly, one being 2 lbs 11.4 oz and the other 2 lbs 15.5 oz. The Maple cure is the smaller piece and I added several pieces cut as trimmings to that bag to make up the 5 lbs per the recipe. all will be smoked together but I'm still debating on whether to use the WSM or my electric sausage smoker from the Sausagemaker...




Bill

Bill, I was looking at my whole slab and I think I see what you mean about one end being thick and wastey. You must have gotten the thick end of the extra slab too.

Cutting up the whole slab yielded an interesting surprize...a nipple! I guess it is belly after all, and hogs have lots of nipples.

Thank you both for this thread!

I recently purchased maple sugar, syrup, and pink salt to make bacon using the Ruhlman recipe.

Several years past, friends and I would buy live hogs, slaughter them, and have a country butcher cut and wrap for us.
I would then cure and smoke the hams and bellies.

For bacon I just used Morton's Tenderquick and brown sugar. After about 3/4 days curing, I cold hickory smoked in an old converted fridge, and later in a ECB with a hot plate in the bottom.

It was the best bacon I've ever eaten, and I'm sure that yours will be the same!

Good luck on your Bacon Adventures!
Looking forward to future posts.

Jeff, you only got 1 nipple??? LOL!

The 2 slabs I'm curing right now came from this piece which I believe is the left rear half of a belly (although, this could be the front right half ) . It looks like a small part of the ham is included. That's what it looked like before I cut it down to this and this . You can see, in the extreme lower left portion, one of the bones I found .. The other was found a bit above that.

Bob, I just went with the dark brown sugar option on mine. I'm psyched about this !!

Bill

quote:

It looks like a small part of the ham is included.

I had a similar end to my whole slab. I think you got that end from the one we split up.

did you look at your whole slab yet? I think you'll find plenty of perfect bacon making real estate.

quote:

Originally posted by j biesinger:

quote:

It looks like a small part of the ham is included.

I had a similar end to my whole slab. I think you got that end from the one we split up.

did you look at your whole slab yet? I think you'll find plenty of perfect bacon making real estate.

Oh yeah. I cut it all up, trimmed it and froze the rest for future endeavors. While I didn't get any pics of the section that had a lot of skin & fat waste, this is the 2nd of 3 sections (i believe it's the front quarter of the portion I've been showing). The last is the one I had to cut in a way that will make half strips of bacon. I'll get a couple pics tomorrow or the next day of that one for ya. I still need to total up the results too.

Thanks again for getting this rolling !!

Bill

The other half of my "proof of concept" hit the griswold pan today. I cured a tiny strip of belly using Ruhlman's pancetta recipe for 11 days and hung it in my basement for another 11. It was developing some green mold, so I took it down and gave it a rub down with vinegar. I cut it up and ate some and fried a bit and I have to say its a must try.



notice the bad mold in the fold of the meat in the top piece.

Look good guys! I'm still in Florida, 70's and nice today!
Todd

J.

Good looking projects there. YOur pancetta is making me jealous. I've run out of the homemade stuff. I've currently got a guanciale drying. It's the same idea as pancetta, except with pig jowl.

Also running low on bacon.

I overhauled my slabs a few hours ago .. Recoated the "Basic Dry Cure" belly since I didn't get enough cure to adhere yesterday. It was plenty wet today They're lookin' good...

Bill

quote:

Look good guys! I'm still in Florida, 70's and nice today!

yeah but....Bill and I are...uh...making bacon.

quote:

I've currently got a guanciale drying. It's the same idea as pancetta, except with pig jowl.

Mario Batali is always taking about that stuff. I assume I'd have to make it myself or source it in nyc. I did talk to a pig farmer when I got some chops from him. I was curious about what he does with the heads, thinking I could get them cheap for guanciale. Well, it turns out he sends his pigs out to be butchered and he had know idea what happens to the heads. So much for that, as he didn't seem too interested in finding out where they go. who's strange me or him?

quote:

I overhauled my slabs a few hours ago .. Recoated the "Basic Dry Cure" belly since I didn't get enough cure to adhere yesterday. It was plenty wet today Smiler They're lookin' good...

indeed they are. Maybe once Todd gets going we'll need to do a bacon cook off so we can compare techniques.

quote:

Originally posted by j biesinger:

quote:

Look good guys! I'm still in Florida, 70's and nice today!

yeah but....Bill and I are...uh...making bacon.

ROFLMAO !! Be careful now .....

Enjoy it, Todd .. Before you know it, you'll be right back here in the thick of it with the rest of us !!

Bill

Saturday night I took the slab out of the brine, and quickly rinsed and blotted it some before it went back in the fridge to dry over night.

I built a small pile of briquettes (<25) in the wsm sunday morning, and added about 10 lit on top.

I added apple wood at the start and twice more on the hours as it was on for 3 hours. The wsm held 225* the whole time and the slab came off at 145* internal.

After smoking, I let the slab cool briefly before attempting to remove the skin. I started with a large knife, but found that it peels off easily enough and it leaves more of the slab behind.

I iced it down and it rested in the fridge until now when I sliced and packed it into 8 decent servings. Unfortunately a whole slab is too wide to fit on my slicer, so I had to cut it in half. Half slices fit in to small vac bags though and will probably fit in a frying pan better.

here's the slab first on the smoker. She was nice and firm out of the brine and you can see how the one end kind of curled as a result of the cure.



and here it as as its coming off.



The end facing you in the pic had nice streaks of meat but the back end was mostly fat. I'm looking forward to trying the different ends to see how they cook up.

I did slice off a bit when it first came off the smoker and it was awesome.

Great looking bacon J!

Oh how I have missed well smoked bacon!
That's why I've got to get going on making my own.

Not too long ago I purchased a package stating:
"Double Smoked" and the smoke aroma & flavor was still weak.

Jeff, that looks fantastic !! I am so looking forward to Friday morning !!

Bill

I'm enjoying following your adventures. Thanks for sharing/starting this thread. I just haven't stepped up to trying this myself. I think I can get some pork belly around here without buying the whole case. You've given me some incentive to check it out.

quote:

I'm enjoying following your adventures. Thanks for sharing/starting this thread. I just haven't stepped up to trying this myself. I think I can get some pork belly around here without buying the whole case. You've given me some incentive to check it out.

Just do what we did...round up some adventurous board members that are within reasonable driving distance and split the case.

or my back up plan was to secure an outlet for the finished bacon. I had about 5 family members that would pay me cost for finished bacon.

what were finding is that the case is cheap, but there's a bit of waste. Approximately 25% of each slab isn't nice and flat like the one in my pics, and then even that slab has fattier parts. Hopefully I'll be able to learn which parts to do what with. I already have plans for the thicker part.

OK .. Here are the results after 7 days in cure. The slab with the chunks is the Maple Cure and the single slab is the basic cure. Notice that some of chunks have quite a bit of redness .. I added these to bring the total weight to just under 5 lbs, which the recipe called for. I thought I had moved everything around enough when overhauling each day but apparently not. I'm guessing that not enough cure got to the reddish parts. Thoughts?

Both slabs look good though. Fairly firm and starting their air dry. A lot of things have come up for tomorrow and I hope I can get these in the electric smoker but if not, Saturday early for sure!

Comments welcome!

Bill