3 way Berkshire Belly

I splurged on a whole side of berkshire belly. At 6.99/lb, I think the whole thing cost me around $70.

It was a great side without a real thick end like I normally see. I did take off some of the thicker bits when I portioned it up.

You can read about the thick bits here

The main hunk was cured with the basic cure with dextrose, following the directions in Charcuterie.

Cured 6 days:


Cold smoked over apple. It was on the grill for maybe 3 hours with 2 cycles of chips in the smoke daddy.


I finished it a low oven (2 hours @ 250*) to an internal of 140*.

The smoke flavor was really intense and much cleaner than what I get out of the wsm. A few more tweaks to my technique and I think I'll be good with my technique.

The rest of the belly was cured similarly with the dextrose cure with the addition of black pepper, fresh rosemary and oregano.


after curing for six days, I hung the belly in my basement.


I tried some more bactoferm mold 600 on it, but I'm not expecting much, since it failed on my duck proscuitto and I left the activated mold out for a week, which I guess is a no no.

Bacon is my next adventure in the WSM.
I was lucky enough to find pork belly at my local butcher shop, but it was about 1/3rd as thick as the ones in your pics.
Berkshire belly seems the way to go from what I've read. Did you get yours online, or locally?
I'm also scouting around for a fridge to make a curing chamber. I wish my dad was still around... he'd flip to find out I was making pancetta!
Dan

I'm planning to smoke bacon in the near future. I think i have to split the belly in two halves, and use cold smoking on one piece, and the WSM on the other half, so that I can compare the two techniques.

Geir, please post your results!

We have a great local shop that makes amazing bacon. Mine rivals it, but I prefer the flavor of their smoke. If I'm going to go through the effort of making my own, I want it to be better than theirs, which explains my obsession with cold smoking.