Buckboard Bacon (RichG)


 

Rich G

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Buckboard_Bacon_Cooked_Sliced.jpg


Well, BruceB sure started a trend when he posted his notes on his first Buckboard Bacon cook. I had been meaning to try this for quite sometime, so, thanks, Bruce, for kicking me off the couch and into gear.

I wrote up the whole cook on my website, but I'll say here that while the product is very good, it's not bacon as I know it. Most of us probably grew up with store bought bacon of one variety or another, and that is a very different animal. The buckboard bacon is, IMHO, a much closer cousin to ham than "American" bacon. I will say this, though, it's REALLY good!!

Hope you enjoy the writeup:

RichG's Buckboard Bacon

Cheers,
Rich G.
 
Great job Rich. I'm doing mine this Saturday.
I love ham, but I'm hoping there will be some
bacony flavor to this.

Might even make some buckboard bacon abt's on Sunday!
 
can you give us a breakdown on exactly how you cured and smoked it? I'd really like to try it.
 
sorry, didn't realize how vague i was. it's the pork belly curing and smoking i'm curious about. also, did you buy a big piece and cut it? and if so, how?

any info is greatly appreciated.
 
Bacon is pretty easy to do. I call my local slaughterhouse ahead of time and tell them to save me a coupla loin bellies when they get some lean, meaty ones. I like brines better than rubbing on cures because rubs tend to get the meat too salty and because they're messy. Brines just about require a dedicated refrigerator to accommodate 5 gal. buckets, but you can do rubs in a big plastic bag.

The brine a friend of mine uses for everything is 1 part Instacure #1 (available from Butcher-packer.com), 2 parts non-iodized salt, 1 part sugar (sometimes white, sometimes brown). It probably comes out pretty close to TenderQuick. So for one gallon of brine you'd go 3 oz. Insta#1, 6 oz. salt, 3 oz. sugar. That makes good bacon, good ham, good smoked chicken, etc. Simple and effective. Or you can just buy some TenderQuick from the grocery store (if you live in a rural area, I guess) if you don't want the hassle of mixing. Mixing your own is cheaper, and you never have to do it twice the same way.

Here is my basic cure and the process I use.

2 slabs (approx. 15 lbs) belly, each slab squared up and cut in half crossways
3 cups non-iodized salt (I buy it by the 50 lb. sack for about $2.50. It's Fine Stock Salt from the local feed mill. You go through a lot of it smoking fish, chickens, etc. Virtually indistinguishable from table salt, except in price)
3 cups dextrose (which I prefer over honey, sugar or maple syrup because I don't like sugar burning on bacon)
1 jar unsulphured molasses
3-4 TBS coarse ground black pepper
6 qts water
4 oz sodium nitrite (6.25%)

If from old sows (or hogs over 300 lbs), use 2 qts cider vinegar and 4 quarts water in place of straight water.

Dissolve everything but pepper in water and then chill brine in 5 gal. bucket. Rub coarse pepper into the fat side of belly if you like it. Otherwise, fergit the pepper. Submerge and lightly weight slabs with a crock-pot lid or sumpin similar.

Soak for three days at approx 38*F., turning occasionally.

After three days, remove sides, pat dry and hang in cool place (basement) overnight for about 6 hours with a fan on low directed to dry them off and form a pellicle. Place in smokehouse early in the morning at about 125*F with a good smudge and vents open. After two hours begin slowy raising smokehouse while you correspondingly close down vent, keeping a good smudge going all the while. About the last four hours, keep at 150*F with vents 1/3rd to 1/4th open, maintaining this condition until internal temp reaches about 128-130*F. Takes about 8 hours in the smokehouse. (In winter, I close them down pretty good at the end.)

I quarter each slab, vacuum it and freeze it whole (about a pound each), then slice it all with a large Forschner steaking knife before it thaws. Soak each piece for just a little bit in warm water before frying at low temp. Keeps the flavor and removes a good bit of the salt. Also, when trimming up to freeze, put bacon ends in separate bag. They're great for beans as they have plenty of smoke.

That cover it, Brandt? Prolly more than you wanted to know.
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Dean, thanks for the post. Your story and others like it are what make this forum what it is. the Doc has cut my fat and salt intake but I enjoy reading your post as much as you enjoy making the bacon. Thanks.
 
Ooops. Forgot to mention that my basic recipe includes 15 finely ground cloves (at the rate of about 1 per lb). Can't forget something that important.

I like fooling around, Steve, hopelessly engaged in just about anything that won't earn me a buck. Here's testament, a pitcher of my smoker, mostly cobbled from scavenged and begged parts.

So, you "eat high on the hog", eh?

Smokin'
 
Thats a great looking smoker. Two questions:
Do you pre-burn those split logs?
What is the blue line or cord?
oops three
Do you do much cold smoking, if so what?
P.S. I have been cutting back.
 
I use the wood as-is for smoke logs. Usually I start out with about 6 pcs of well-lit charcoal, cover it with a handful of hickory chips for instant smoke, and then build the logs around it to smolder. There's a vent to the front of the smoke box which controls air intake, and creosote precipitates out along the 4" stovepipe and drains back into the fire chamber.

The blue stuff is plastic conduit and it protects the electrical wires that go to my thermostat (the box with the yellow face on it), which in turn controls the heat inside the smoker.

Yes, I hot and cold smoke with this unit, and if it didn't have some plastic around the inside where the door meets the metal interior, I would remove the door gasket and crank the temp up to bbq levels just to see. Thermostat regulates from 50*F to 250*F.

I have cold smoked jerky (if you consider 90*F as cold), fish and cheese (at 70*F), but mostly I'm a salami, sausage, and poultry kinda guy, hot smoking at temps from 120*F up to 170*F. May try cold smoking some feral hams when the weather cools down again as hot smoking tends to dry them out since they're so lean.
 
I just made up a batch of buckboard bacon. 1T tender quick and 1T granular splenda per pound of butt and light dusting of fresh ground black pepper. 10 days in a zip lock turning daily. $8.97 hot ring and $4.98 bag of Real Flavor Hickory chunks from the wally world mothership turned the WSM into a cold smoker. cold smoked for 5 hours, it was cold so i finished in a 170f oven to an internal of 140f. chilled overnight and fried up thin slice till crisp. YUM
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<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Jane Cherry:
It looks like an old freezer? <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Actually, it was a new freezer.
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There's a better picture of it and a brief explanation of its origins in a thread entitled Feral Hog Sausage in the Other Meats Forum.
 

 

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