Pork belly to bacon questions

Anticipating a lot of smoking I bought 4 pork bellies from PolyFace Farms. These are huge! They are folded and unfolded will easily be 3 feet long. So, I'll be cutting for sure.
Couple questions. Have SWM and want to try cold smoke (have a SJS with 4" ports and hot plate skillet, fan, piping, etc.) and have read that hot smoke to 150 or so is good too. I do not want to use Quick Cure or any Sodium Nitrate/Nitrite cure. Just salt and? Have several cure recipes that fit that bill. Any advise on either cure recipe or smoke technique?? Thanks.

I noticed you posted this yesterday and no replies. Can't say I can help but and not sure what you are trying to do. Do you want to smoke these on you WSM? If that is the case you will just cook uncured bacon. Not sure it can be called bacon if it isn't cured!
I think you would be wise to cure the bellies before smoking. Salt will draw a lot of the moisture out so water activity is low enough to prohibit microbial growth. If you have some way to cold smoke at a temp low enough to keep the meat below 130 degrees that will render out a lot of the fat. This will leave you with bellies ready to slice and cook into bacon!

Steven,

My advice, for what it is worth ...

Don't trust Alton on this one, you will want to hot smoke the bacon. His salt-only recipes are awful. They don't taste like bacon.

Check out this and other threads for other advice and info.

Jim

I'm with Jim, pretty much, on this one.

There is no need to keep the meat below 130. Temps in the 140s or to 150 will not render out any significant amount of the fat, let alone much.

Hot smoking is preferable, imo. First, bacon is typically hot-smoked, not cold-smoked, a common assumption. One simple hot-smokes on the lower end of the scale, in the mid-150s or so for a while, then allowing the cooktemp to drift up a bit.

Curing means salt. It does not necessarily mean nitrate. For something to be cured salt is a must as it is the operative ingredient in any cure. For bacon, sugar is common - at least some, but you don't need so much that the bacon is sweet, unless that is what you are looking for.

I've made a lot of bacon with no added nitrate. It can be just fine but, a strong suggestion, use a good quality, fine sea salt, preferably French. It is likely to contain natural nitrate and so will cause the color and flavor most associated with bacon.

I did this a couple of weeks ago. I got a belly about a foot long and sprinkled sea salt (about 1/2 of a cup) and pepper on it, then put it in a plastic container in the fridge with a lid on. Every 24 hours I drained out any liquid and put a few pinches of salt on it, for 5 days.

Then I started a half size fire in the WSM and let it cook at about 190-200deg for 3 hours, until it got to 150deg. I read somewhere that is what you are meant to do. It sort of cooked, it was gray through not like cold smoked pink.

When it was cold I sliced it, and I can tell you it's the best bacon I ever had. I fry it before I eat it as I don't think it's properly cooked in the WSM.

Basically I did it really simply, just salting as a cure for a week then smoke. The salt sucks out moisture which is what bacteria need, and then you smoke it and freeze it anyway.

Ryan

Bacon is not usually cold smoked. The pink comes from the chemical reaction of nitrate.

No need to drain the belly. Enough moisture remains in the meat for bacteria. What prevents their growth is the salt concentration. Smoke is also bactericidal and bacteriostatic.

Though 150 is, technically, cooked, bacon lacks the texture and flavor we most associated with it unless it is fried, baked, or cooked further in some fashion.