Boog's Bacon

      Making your own bacon at home is one of the most useful, gratifying, sensible things you can do as a home cook. It is very easy and with a bit of preparation and planning ahead you can have delicious bacon stocked up for months. I encourage you to source a belly from a free range organic pig preferably wild foraging on nuts and roots. This results is a meat with much more flavor. Animals to a degree will taste like what they are eating. If you want pork with a nutty, rich, earthy flavor you'll take the time to source a quality hog. Feed a pig garlic and chestnuts and the flesh will reflect those flavors. The best place to source a large primal cut of meat as well as a quality one is of course your local farmers market. Most regular grocery stores dont offer quality meats, most organic ones dont offer large cuts, if they offer any meat at all. Butcher shops are a dying breed unfortunately and the ones that are left are of suspect integrity.
      I special ordered a whole belly a week in advance from Many Rocks Farm, a purveyor at the Baltimore Farmers Market, offering the Mulefoot breed of pig. The flavor was rich, and almost gamey from the wild diet they were raised on; one of the most flavorful breeds of pig I've tasted. Regardless of where you source your pork from, the factory farmed pig (offered at most "regular" grocery stores) is going to fall far flat in terms of flavor, fat content, and health benefits. If this is absolutely the only thing you can find and afford, homemade bacon is still worth the effort. My reasoning for spending the extra dough is that I want to know exactly what is going into my body - healthy animals means healthy meat which means healthy me. If you look at the ingredients list of a pre-made product and you dont recognize or cant pronounce the ingredients on the list, I would think twice about eating it. At the same time, if you shop for the cheapest version of any product, you have to stop and think "why is this the cheapest" - in most cases its because its the shittiest version or the quality is at least compromised in some way. Im not saying to buy the most expensive version of everything but to be aware of whats going into your body because what goes in, is going to manifest itself in some way or another.
      The beauty of making your own is obviously that you can hone the seasoning and salt content it to your own taste buds but furthermore that you can smoke it with whatever wood, guarantee freshness, leave out the nitrates and nitrites, and slice it however thick or thin you want (or even leave some as slab bacon). Like I mentioned in an earlier post, farmers markets are a great place to source any of your food because you can stand there and ask the farmer (or someone that is at least somehow involved in the process) all about the product in consideration (for meat for example: what was the diet of the animal, what is the breed, is it free range, is it organic, age at slaughter, how long was it hung) and perhaps make a special request for a primal cut.
 Now that you have your whole or half pork belly (they can range anywhere from 10-15 lbs so half might be a better start), its time to make your dry cure. Get creative and add what you want - you could make a sweeter breakfast bacon, an herbal savory bacon, or a simple pepper bacon. My recipe combines them all and works well for pretty much anything I use bacon for.

The Dry Cure
   8-10 lbs pork belly
   1/3 cup maple syrup
   140 grams salt (preferably sea salt) or a scant half cup if you dont have a scale
   1/4 cup sucanat or brown sugar
   2 T crushed bay leaves
   1 T toasted coriander seeds
   2 T course freshly ground pepper
   2 T juniper berries
   2 tsp allspice berries
   1 tsp cloves
   6 garlic cloves pressed through a garlic press or grated
   6-8 sprigs of fresh thyme
Rub the belly with the maple syrup. Mix the rest of the ingredients in a bowl and rub all over the top, bottom, and sides of the belly. Place on a half sheet tray or a nonreactive container large enough to fit the belly. Cover with plastic wrap, press with a weight on top and store in the fridge for 5-7 days depending on the thickness of the belly (most are 1-2 inches thick; the thicker the longer it takes to cure).

 

After the cure time, wash the belly thoroughly and place on a wrack and back in the fridge uncovered for another day or two to form a pellicle (dry shiny surface that smoke will adhere to). After a minimum of 12 hrs it is ready to smoke. Make sure to soak your chips/wood for at least an hr before smoking. I used applewood chips and chestnut shells that I had left over from making chestnut soup but pretty much any type of wood chips or nut shells will do the trick. Hickory I actually tend to stay away from because of their overpowering almost astringent flavor. Fire your grill up for indirect heat at 300-325 degrees. Once the grill is heated and at a steady temp add the chips and the belly. Cover as much as you can  in order to hold in the smoke and maintain the temp. Smoke for 2-4 hrs or until internal temp reaches 150 F.

 There you have it, your bacon is ready to slice once its cooled. Leaving some of the bacon as slab bacon allows you to cut it into chunks for soups and stews, strips for salads and sauces. The slices I cook on a rack rubbed with a bit of sucanat and freshly cracked pepper in a 375 F oven.

This helps off set the saltiness of the bacon and yields a nice crispy caramelized surface. Happy smokey bacon adventures.