Coffee Bacon, Regular Bacon and Canadian Bacon

[Joe Milczewski]

Found a gorgeous pork belly down at Whole Foods about 10 days ago and decided to cure some bacon. I also wanted to try some Canadian bacon so I grabbed a small tenderloin. The belly once trimmed was probably right around 6 pounds. I cut it in half so I could experiment with a coffee cure. Working from left to right is the pork tenderloin curing for Canadian bacon (Tender Quick, garlic, onion, bay leaf, black pepper and brown sugar), a fairly standard bacon cure on one half of the pork belly (Tender Quick, garlic, onion, black pepper, cumin & brown sugar) and then the other half of the belly with a coffee cure I made up (Dunkin Donuts ground coffee, Tender Quick, garlic, onion, brown sugar, cumin and black pepper). This photo is after 9 days of curing in the Beer Fridge.

After being rinsed... I don't soak anything following the cure like a lot of recipes call for. I just give them a good aggressive rinse with my hands to remove excess cure.

And then just about to go back in the Beer Fridge to dry out for about 24 hours...

They'll go in the smoker this afternoon. I'll smoke the bellies for an hour or so at as low a temp as I can get the WSM. Probably be around 150 or 175. I've never had a ton of luck doing a true cold smoke in the WSM. I don't take bacon up to a certain temp when I smoke it, I just try to get a little smoke flavor into it. The Canadian bacon I think I'll smoke at 225 to an internal of 145. Never done it before so who knows how it'll turn out. I'll try to get some pics up tonight or in the morning of the finished product.

 

[Craig Alumbaugh]

Cant wait to see the finished product

 

[Joe Milczewski]

Cant wait to see the finished product

Me neither.

Have to admit I'm a little concerned about the canadian bacon. I have cured a lot of bacon over the past few years from pork belly but have never cured a loin for canadian bacon. The loin didn't firm up or tighten up nearly as much as the pork belly does. I guess I shouldn't have expected it to given the different muscles, fat, etc. involved but I'd be lying if it didn't give me a little pause when I picked it up to rinse it.

 

[JRAiona]

I'll be watching closely too. I'm smoking my first bacon tomorrow.

 

[Bob H.]

They all look good, and that coffee cured is especially interesting.

 

[Joe Milczewski]

All the bacon went on the WSM a couple hours agol. Smoke provided by apple chunks

This was about two hours later, about to pull the bacon...

Had pulled the Canadian bacon off a bit earlier and couldn't resist a taste

Canadian bacon turned out great. Good tenderness and color. Lots of smoke flavor but that's great by me.

Will have a taste test on the bacon in the morning. If you've never made bacon at home it's worth a go. You won't believe how much better it is than store bought.

 

[Dwain Pannell]

Those are some pretty slabs!

 

[Cliff Bartlett]

Wow, that's some fantastic looking bacon

 

[Mike Gray]

Looking good. Have done homemade bacon just once and agree it's much better than store bought. I havent tried my hand at Canadian bacon yet, but after seeing this its next on my list.

 

[Joe Milczewski]

I really liked the Canadian bacon but the next time will definitely add more sugar to the cure. Only had about 2 tbs in this batch. Could use a lot more.

 

[James Lake]

Love home made bacon, you got some mad skills there

 

[Joe Milczewski]

Bumping just to share a couple other lessons learned from this batch.

I love how the coffee bacon turned out. The coffee flavor is only just barely noticeable. It's there, but you almost have to look for it a little bit. I'm good with that, but if anyone wants to try a coffee cure and you want a really pronounced coffee flavor you might try a wet cure. Either that or use an espresso grind in the cure rather than Dunkin Donuts Original.

As for the Canadian bacon, I'm really happy with this batch but would definitely plus up the amount of sugar in the cure or would consider using a little maple syrup. I would also highly recommend using a pork loin rather than a tenderloin. In retrospect the tenderloin is a little small once it's cured and smoked so it takes about 3 slices to fit in an English muffin. Also, and maybe more importantly, I think the size of a tenderloin means there is too much surface ratio to meat and so the whole thing took a little too much smoke. I think using the larger loin would help on both points.