Bacon w/o smoking

[Matt McGrogan]

I am between home sales (just sold my house/yard) and presently in an apartment. Needless to say, all of my grill equipment including the smoker is presently in storage. While I would've preferred to smoke the pork belly, it just wasn't possible at this time. So I did it in the oven! Here are my results to anyone who is interested to see if bacon can be done without the smoke....

Purchased this 3lb belly from a local farmer's market. I followed Ruhlman's 7-day savory cure. Here's what it looked like after the cure and rinse:

Before putting it into the oven, I applied a thick pepper rub to the top (skinless side):

a gentle cook at 200°F for 2 hours until an internal temp of 150°F:

All squared off, ready to be cooled and sliced the following day:

 

[Paul K]

Matt,

Looks great! Let us know how it tastes. And welcome!

Paul

 

[Jon Des.]

Welcome to the board Matt. That is a fantastic looking belly! And I just don't say that to everyone.

 

[Clint]

That really looks great!

I'm close to my first attempt...been talking about it for about a year & a half, & I tried to find prague powder #1 (that's all I could think of, not sure if that's the stuff anyway) when I was at Cabelas last weekend....

 

[Geir Widar]

You can use regular salt. No problem, but keep hygiene in mind, and there will be a slight change in taste, and a larger change in how your bacon looks. I'ts mostly cosmetical with today's food standards.

 

[Dave from Denver]

That belly looks like fantastic quality belly. Good find.

 

[Matt McGrogan]

For anyone still looking for a source, Pink Salt (Sodium Nitrite aka Curing Salt) can be found at most Williams Sonoma shops.

 

[Wolgast]

Next time i will do a pepper crust aswell! Great looking BCN

 

[Steve_A (Tatoosh)]

Matt, great looking bacon. I would try that in my oven, but I have my Weber 22.5 OTG and a smokenator. I don't have a problem keeping the Weber/Smokenator combo at the 175F to 190F range using local charcoal and the water pan in the cutout for it.

I have some Prague #1, but I could use a good brine recipe and the cracked pepper exterior rub. I've been making pepper bacon out of store bought by simply adding fresh ground pepper to it when I cook it. But I'd love to do that peppery exterior when smoking. Any reason if the skin is removed that both sides cannot have a pepper rub on them?

 

[tjkoko]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Matt McGrogan:
For anyone still looking for a source, Pink Salt (Sodium Nitrite aka Curing Salt) can be found at most Williams Sonoma shops. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Please checkout ALLIEDKENCO.COM for their cures. It's a great place to shop for home meat processing.