Poor Man's Bacon.......


 
MartinF DiggingDogFarm

MartinF DiggingDogFarm

TVWBB Fan
I've made this for years.

2dkbqy9.jpg


I cut out the well marbled top (neck) end of the pork butt and reserve the fat cap.

My cure recipe is inspired by Morton's Tender Quick (but with nitrite only) so that the cure is super easy to use....use one tablespoon per pound of meat (whole cuts)....no additional salt is needed.

Morton Tender Quick Alternative:

All-Purpose Cure Mix

17.5 oz canning/pickling salt

5.5 oz granulated sugar

2 oz cure #1

Mix well before using.

For Poor Man's Bacon I use 1 tablespoon of the cure and one teaspoon of molasses per pound of meat....plus any other desired flavorings.
Measure the thickest part of the meat....rub on the cure and molasses and place in a ziplock bag. Cure for 60 hours per inch, turning the bag a few times a day accompanied by a quick massage.

When curing is complete (don't rinse or soak in water), I wrap the fat cap around the piece of butt and tie with butcher's twine.

Some have asked how well this holds together.
The answer is very well if you don't rinse of the exuded protein after curing.
The meat should have a natural stickiness to it that binds, especially when the meat is heated.

Place bacon in the smoker and heat smoker to 150 degrees for 45 minutes without smoke. Increase temperature to 200 degrees and start smoke. Smoke until internal temperature of meat reaches 140 degrees. Turn off heat and leave bacon in smoker for 1 hour to cool down.

Slice thin!!!!

It's good and cheap!

~Martin :cool:
 
Great looking bacon! I love your recipe and will be making a bunch of it salt and sugar cure this afternoon, though I will probably substitute honey for molasses. I have 8+ kilos of pork belly waiting for attention in the fridge. Your PMB is very interesting and I will print out TVWBB's guide to Pork Butt and Picnic Cuts to show the meat cutter today. They don't cut the pig up quite the same here as they do in the States.
 
I don't see why you couldn't make a coppa out of this same cut of meat, tied up like that. Bacon looks good. Why don't you apply smoke earlier in the process?
 
2nd question: You are using pork butt, which you rolled. The fat cap is removed and then added back and tied on? Do you remove the blade bone when you cut the bone out? Then roll and tie? I'm not sure how you get those nice rolls but I'd really like to learn the trick. Roughly what is the diameter of the rolled butt before curing and smoking? I'd love to do something like this for Texas Sized Eggs Benedict and even over sized BLTs! Maybe someday you can youtube the butcher and wrap process for the butt?

We just did pork belly with your cure recipe. We had enough granulated sugar on hand to follow your recipe, so no brown sugar or muscovado substitutions. Then we added a 1/2 cup of supposed honey (I have my doubts about the local market honey) to make a nice sticky rub. We gave the pork bellies a nice rub on all sides along with some cracked pepper. They will go into the fridge for 7 days of turning and massage.

I really want to do it with the pork butt in the near future. The round bacon looks great. We've done rolled bacon with local bellies that were too thin to make a good standard bacon. But your poor man's butt bacon looks much better.
 
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Steve_A (Tatoosh) said:
2nd question: You are using pork butt, which you rolled. The fat cap is removed and then added back and tied on? Do you remove the blade bone when you cut the bone out? Then roll and tie? I'm not sure how you get those nice rolls but I'd really like to learn the trick. Roughly what is the diameter of the rolled butt before curing and smoking? I'd love to do something like this for Texas Sized Eggs Benedict and even over sized BLTs! Maybe someday you can youtube the butcher and wrap process for the butt?
Click to expand...

The center of the bacon is cut from the neck end of the butt, completely opposite the bone, cured, then rolled and tied.
Size of the finished bacon depends on the size of the butt, the one pictured is about 5 inches, center portion about 3.5 inches.

~Martin
 
That's a really interesting piece of bacon. I'm planning on getting a shoulder to make tasso out of, I might try this with the end. Thanks for posting!
 
They did not have quite that nice cut of meat. They had a shoulder with the leg attached. I am kind of guessing the neck section had been removed. So it goes. I got it anyway.

The shoulder:

shoulder3.jpg


The Fat Cap:

fatcap.jpg


Sorry about the quality of photos, all I have at the moment is my phone's so-so camera. Better camera is coming soon, I hope!

The ruler is a tad over 1 foot but it gives you an idea of the size of the shoulder. Probably better for pulled pork, but maybe I can get away with curing and rolling it? You remove the fat cap but should I do that before or after curing? My guess is after curing, then roll the meat, surround with fat cap and tie up. Or that is the plan at the moment. What I like about rolled bacon is it holds onto flavorings better. So it "rolls" up the honey or pepper or whatever I end up using.
 
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Steve_A (Tatoosh) said:
You remove the fat cap but should I do that before or after curing? My guess is after curing, then roll the meat, surround with fat cap and tie up. Or that is the plan at the moment. What I like about rolled bacon is it holds onto flavorings better. So it "rolls" up the honey or pepper or whatever I end up using.
Click to expand...

I remove it before curing because the sticky protein exudate will help hold the roll together.


~Martin
 
Thanks for the pointers! We will remove the fat cap and cure separately. A question about your Tender Quick Replacement recipe. You call for 2 ounces of Cure #1, but that is normally the amount specified for 50 pounds of meat by the cure manufacturer. I am guessing 17.5 ounces of salt is roughly 2 cups, but I don't have canning salt available here, I have to use the locally produced Sea Salt. The 5.5 ounces of sugar is a bit over half a cup. So the 2 ounces of Cure #1 makes a total of 25 ounces/1 lb 9 ounces, maybe a rough 2 3/4 cups of cure? I am very glad you gave weights, since I can use those with differing salts, something that is much harder if only volume amounts are specified.

But the 2 ounces of cure seems like quite a bit for the amount produced. Your math seems impeccable, however. I changed the weights to grams so I could work them easier. MTQ has 0.5 percent sodium nitrite. Considering your overall weight of salt, sugar, and cure#1, an equivalent weight of MTQ would contain 3.54 grams of sodium nitrite, which is just what 2 ounces of cure #1 provides. Very nice, indeed. Just curious that the makers of the cure say 50 pounds for 2 ounces.

Here are a couple of photos of the cure I made following your recipe. Note the very pink cast to it.

The remainder of the TQ Replacement after we did 6 kilos of bacon and made a brine for 10 thick cut pork chops, roughly 1.5 kilos worth:

mfddfcure1.jpg


And a slightly blurry close up of the recipe:

mfdfcure1mac.jpg


Kinda pink, but just what I need to do my chops! And the Poor Man's Bacon that we will start curing tomorrow. I am so in impatient to smoke bacon! The Northern Philippines has been getting pounded with rain. Parts of Manila (a few hours south of me) has had over 3 feet of rain in the last week! Up here in the mountains we are getting it too, but it runs down hill so no major floods so far. But impossible to smoke for almost two weeks due to typhoons, rain, and wind! Ack and double ack! The recent arrival of a large box of hickory and cherry wood, along with rib racks and an electric meat slicer have me on pins and needles for just one dry day I can light up my Weber and Smokenator!
 
Steve_A (Tatoosh) said:
Thanks for the pointers! We will remove the fat cap and cure separately. A question about your Tender Quick Replacement recipe. You call for 2 ounces of Cure #1, but that is normally the amount specified for 50 pounds of meat by the cure manufacturer. I am guessing 17.5 ounces of salt is roughly 2 cups, but I don't have canning salt available here, I have to use the locally produced Sea Salt. The 5.5 ounces of sugar is a bit over half a cup. So the 2 ounces of Cure #1 makes a total of 25 ounces/1 lb 9 ounces, maybe a rough 2 3/4 cups of cure? I am very glad you gave weights, since I can use those with differing salts, something that is much harder if only volume amounts are specified.

But the 2 ounces of cure seems like quite a bit for the amount produced. Your math seems impeccable, however. I changed the weights to grams so I could work them easier. MTQ has 0.5 percent sodium nitrite. Considering your overall weight of salt, sugar, and cure#1, an equivalent weight of MTQ would contain 3.54 grams of sodium nitrite, which is just what 2 ounces of cure #1 provides. Very nice, indeed. Just curious that the makers of the cure say 50 pounds for 2 ounces.
Click to expand...

In order to work as intended, pickling/canning salt, or something very similar, must be used (non-iodized table salt may work), and yes, 2 ounces of Cure#1 cures 50 pounds of meat.
My cure mix is used at a rate of 1 tablespoon (1/2 ounce) of cure mix per pound of whole cuts.
17.5 ounces salt + 5.5 ounces granulated sugar + 2 ounces cure #1= 25 ounces cure mix or 50 tablespoons (1/2 ounce)
So then, the 25 ounces of cure mix will cure 50 lbs. of whole cuts.

Alternately, you may want to use the Universal Cure Calculator on my site, that way you have more control over the salt and sugar percentages.

http://www.diggingdogfarm.com/page2.html

~Martin
 
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Dang it, I visited your website a couple of days back but could not get past the front door. The only link that works on the front page is the "contacts" link. Your photos, the Home and About entries have no link and there is no way to navigate from there. The page 2 looks very nice and yes, thank you for pointing me there.
 
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