Bacon


 
J

JoeE

New member
I am looking into doing some bacon and I can get a nice belly from my local butcher. I know I want to use some honey and light brown sugar with some cracker black pepper and #1 pink curing salt from The Sausage Maker. I plan on using honey to cover the belly and then ½ cup of salt ½ cup of brown sugar, 1 TBS of black pepper, and 1 tsp of Insta-Cure #1. Letting it brine for a week in the refrigerator flipping it at day 3. I want to low cook it on my 18.5" at about 175 deg for 4 hours or until internal temp is 150 deg. I have done some test runs on getting the temp dialed in with no meat but my water pan filled. I have tried to play with the bottom three vents and the top open 100%. I can not seem to get the internal temp below 200-225 deg. I am wondering what else I can do to either the smoker or the fuel I am using, Kingsford blue briquettes.
 
Dustin Dorsey said:
The best way I know is using the snake method. Stack them in two's for around 150 and in 4's for closer to 180. Start it with a weber cube or maybe 5 or six lit briquettes at the beginning of the snake. Fiddle with the vents as needed.
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Thanks Dustin. I'm going to test that out later tonight with a small snake of 4 to get closer to 180 and play with the vents. I usually do not use a snake but it does make total sense. Would you use chips like pictured or would some chunks work well? I am thinking about apple/cherry and hickory.
 
I think I used chips because maybe I just had chips there. Small chunks would probably be good too. I never use the snake unless I'm trying to do a low temp cook like you are. I usually do it with sausage. I haven't tried making bacon yet, but it's definitely on my to do list.

Edit: Ditto what Bob said. I personally think that Ruhlman recipe has its cure too high. Recipe books get kind of weird with this. I use .25% by weight of cure #1 for sausage and I'd probably use .32% by weight of cure#1 for dry cured bacon. Good luck calculating percentage in standard units from weight to teaspoons. It works great in metric. The FDA limits are put in part per million for sodium nitrite, not cure #1 which contains 6.26% of sodium nitrite. Good luck not getting that calculation orders of magnitude off. You should probably just follow the recipe, lol.
 
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Trying to test run an empty smoker is hard even with a heat sink like water.
Add some cold meat, because that adds another sink and your temps with the snake should come down.

Tim
 
Dustin, that looks like about a 60% ring, 2 wide and, 2 high is the right?
It's really early and I have not finished my first half cup of coffee yet!
 
I meant they were single stacked instead of double stacked too long. I needed to get to a higher temp sooner than I did.
 
I agree with Bob and Dustin. I also think that Ruhlmans cure level is to high. When I use pink salt I use 1 gram per pound of meat. That will give you 138 ppm.
 
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