Another 1st attempt at bacon on the WSM

[Matt Westendorf (Westy)]

Last week I decided to try my hand at curing and smoking my own bacon. I called a couple of the local butchers looking for pork belly and one of them had some fresh (as well as some they had froze). I sent my wife on a mission to procure the pork belly.

She came home with this nice looking chunk of belly...

It weighted in at 7 lbs.

The brine I used was from a link that I found on here (http://saucissonmac.blogspot.com/2009/10/taking-back-bacon.html). I went the picking brine route using this recipe for the brine...

Brine:
5 L water
440g Salt
50g Curing Salt
450g Sugar

Pickling Spice:
16g Black peppercorns
11g Allspice
10g coriander
10g brown mustard seed
4 bay leaves

The belly soaked for 3 1/3 - 4 days, I pulled it, rinsed it and put back in the fridge overnight. I smoked with peach and hickory until the internal temps hit 150. From there I wrapped it and set it inside to rest while I started prepping ribeyes for supper. I checked the fuel status and I had barley burned up at of my charcoal so we decided to do the steaks on the WSM rather than fire up the kettle. I opened all the vents and soon the lump charcoal had my WSM running at 450 degrees...the hottest I've ever had the pit. I did a dandy job on the steaks.

Ok enough talk...on to the pictures sorry for the terrible lighting (my kitchen lighting needs some help!)


Ready to be pulled, internal temp at 150

I brined this from Sunday afternoon to Wednesday evening, pulled it from the brine, rinsed, dried and put back in the fridge to air dry overnight. It looks to me like the brine had penatrated the slab pretty well even in the short soak time.

Bottom line, it looked like bacon, smelled like bacon and tasted like bacon (just a bit salty). Overall I really liked the flavor and the amount of smoke I had on the bacon but it was a bit on the salty side. Never having tried it before I didn't give it a fresh water soak because I wasn't sure how salty it would be.

So given that it was a little on the salty side, should I have given it a fresh water soak or do I need to tweak the salt ratio in the brine?

I see a number of folks do the dry cure rather than using a brine so maybe I'll give it a shot that way.

Any pointers would be greatly appreciated!

 

[Jon Des.]

It looks fantastic. I've found that I like brining better than dry curing because you can get more flavor into the meat, but it's worth experimenting. Someone that knows the math on this might be able to chime in on the salt concentration, but I will say that I add another step between rinsing and drying. I typically soak my bacon for an hour and then fry off a slice to check the flavor to see if I've soaked it long enough. I'd love to find a brine that would allow me to skip this step.