Buckboard Bacon results!

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After 9 days of curing the butt in the fridge, I took em out and smoked em yesterday to 140. Popped both pieces back in the fridge after cooling dowm, and sliced this morning. \

No problem slicing when cold. Used a Henckel, and the texture of the meat was similar to a pastrami I made one time. The slices were beautiful to look at, kind of a cross between bacon and ham. Obivously thicker and wider than storebought bacon.

So I fried some up. Yes it's good, and yes there is a hammy taste to mine, but it also tastes like bacon. I will say this...I did miss
the crispy texture of the storebought, fatty bacon. This is like a whole new meat! A mild bacon flavor, with the texture of a ham.

If you can imagine a cross between bacon, a country ham, and a city ham, it's kind of like that. I'll be doing more of this because it's so cheap, much cheaper than buying bacon or ham.

Great tasting breakfast meat. Rethinking my idea of using it for ABT's though. Also had some odd shaped scraps left over that look great for cooking with.

The gist of this is that when you say bacon, people have such preconceived ideas. It's not the same thing obviously, but it's good
and does have a bacon flavor. 2 thumbs up here.

Won't post much more today because my internet is down, and I came to work to let you know about this cook. I'll be back tomorrow morning to answer any questions...thanks to Bruce and everyone who helped me with info for this cook!

Jim
 
I've got my buckboard bacon cure here, but cuz of the strange hamminess of bacon butts (to coin a phrase), I'm trying to figure out where on earth to find pork bellies or jowls in the DC area so i can make a proper bacony bacon.

Will try the pork butt if necessary, but I sure do like regular old fatty bacon.

Maybe a farmer's market type butcher shop?
 
Susan, go to the best meat counter you can find.
Ask the butcher about availability. He may not have them, but he can sure get them for you.

I've seen jowls in my supermarkets down here, but they are already smoked. I'd be real interested what the raw pork bellies would look like. Seems they'd be hard to slice thinly with a knife.
 
Thanks, Jim, it's worth a try. Now it seems I've got the go ahead to make a pork butt bacon (mom sez she's looking for a good canadian-type bacon for eggs benedict) so I'm going to try this stuff out on the meat I can readily find.

As for the slicing, I reckon that once it's smoked it'll be a bit easier to handle than the raw deal.

I'd better find me a pork but and get this process underway if it really takes days and days and days to cure. Who can wait that long???
 
Susan, I think they make Canadian Bacon the same way, except they use pork loins! It may be a different cure, but Hi Mountain probably has it.
 
Hmmm. Well, since I've got a ton of buckboard cure, and since pork butt is prolly cheaper than pork loin, I'll try making the hammy bacon that folks here describe. Later on I'll experiment with a pork loin (that makes sense---you can see how that would slice right into the traditional Canadian bacon shape) and if I'm lucky enough to find 'green' jowls or bellies, I'll try them too, to see if I can't make regular bacon. All good excuses to break out the WSM...!

Sadly, I just realized my buckboard cure is 40 miles away at a friend's farm. I was just about to head to the store to get some meat to start the process. I had the stuff shipped there along with some jerky seasoning cuz I'm planning to try some venison jerky. Drat. That's gonna' set me back a week.

: (
 
I have tried the Hi Mountain cure on pork loins twice. The first time, I smoked it and the second time I did it in the oven. I found them a little tougher than store-bought canadian bacon, but quite good. I think the toughness might have been due to the size of the loin, not the curing process.

I am curing a pork butt now. I wasn't happy with my deboning effort and got an end product that was more uneven than I preferred, but it looks like it is curing well.
 
Whoo hoo! Discovered a cache of buckboard bacon cure (forgot I had ordered some more from hi-mountain after originally ordering some from allied kenco), so while mr. brown is all rubbed and in the fridge waiting for his date with the silver bullet later, I'm off to find another pork butt to turn into whatever kind of bacon it plans to become.

Yay!
 
Oh, goodness, you should see the literal and figurative butcher job I did in deboning my pork butt...! Mostly that's ok cuz i wanted to butterfly it to cure it.

So it's in the buckboard cure, and let's see what happens 7 or 10 days out. What an adventure!

Meanwhile, I'm all smokey smelling cuz I've got my pork butt on and a brisket joining it at midnight. Life is GOOD.
 
Do you really have to smoke it after you cure it? I cooked some tonight on the stove (wanted to see what it tasted like) and it was great. Kind of a cross between Canadian Bacon, and regular bacon.
 
Well, you don't HAVE to smoke anything, but...doesn't it add all kinds of groovy flavor? Like hickory smoked flavor, etc.

Good to know that you don't actually need to go thru that part, tho, if yer in a hurry or something.
 
I think I'll check my costco this weekend. My first foray into the buckboard bacon making was really great. I wasn't sure what to think of it last night, but it sometimes takes me awhile to figure out whether I like or dislike something when it's a complete unknown, as this was. This morning I woke up craving it, and having stuck it in the freezer, it sliced much more easily. Fried up some and wow, it was great! I sliced up the rest of it (I'd already given half to my mom, a move I now regret. Guess I'll be dropping in for some BLTs soon....!) and wanted some so bad that I nuked a couple of thick pieces. Not as good as frying, mind you, but still delish.

Thanks again, Bruce! I'm definitely making this again. Think I'll try a pork loin, too.
 
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