Bacon

A couple weeks ago, Greg's dad, Bob, and I were watching Food Network when we saw the Good Eats episode about making bacon. We thought it sounded like quite the good idea, so within a few days, I had acquired some pork belly and started the brining process, putting us on our way towards homesmoked bacon.

I rubbed both pieces with a good deal of coarsely ground black pepper. One of the bellies was then submerged in a brine of apple juice, molasses, salt, and sugar. The other belly was more generously rubbed with pepper, then rubbed with molasses and salt and sugar.



Into the fridge they went for three days.



This morning I rinsed them both off and patted them dry. I placed them on a rack and let a fan blow across them to dry off the surface.



While the pork bellies dried, we went about putting together the smoker. We placed an electric stove at the bottom of a trashcan and set a cast iron pan over the burner to form our smoke generator.



Construction consisted mostly of using duct tape to form seals where the smoke would flow.



On the far end, we taped a plastic bag around the edge of a fan, then cut a hole in the bag and fitted into the hole some aluminum tubing so that the air flow would move through the tube.



The tube coming from the fan fed into the trash can, our smoke generator. A second tube leaving the smoke generator led to the smoke box. The idea was that air blowing into the smoke generator would force the smoke to move through the second tube, into the smoke box. Though not shown, some mesh was placed over the tube coming from the fan so that any debris or insects that made its way through the fan wouldn't end up in the smoke generator.



A flap on the lid of the smoke generator allowed easy access to the cast iron pan for the purpose of adding more wood chips when needed. We used hickory today.



Here's the tubing from the smoke generator feeding into the smoke box.



There's pork in there! And some gouda.



Here's the entire setup.



It's our first time cold smoking so I don't know if this was a bad idea but we made a little slit in the side of the smoke box in order to keep a pan supplied with ice. It was a fairly hot day so we were concerned about keeping the temperature below 80 or 90 degrees F. I think it worked.



Six hours of checking on the temperature and smoke later, we had bacon! Here is the molasses black pepper.



Slicing the apple molasses bacon.



Mm, bacon.



We had a little trouble with cutting the slices evenly so had a little trouble cooking everything to a good level of crisp, but it turned out with just a bit of extra carbon.





I baked some rolls for dinner.



The day's work was celebrated with mini BLTs with bonus smoked gouda, Bob's pasta salad, and some fresh peaches.



Bacon is good.