More Bacon

Made another batch of bacon. One sweet and one savory.

Post cure bacon, Savory (left), Sweet (right) Post Smoke Bacon, Savory (bottom), (Sweet top)

Sweet

• 2.12 lbs pork bellie
• 1/4 cup Dry cure (includes sodium nitrite, salt and sugar)
• 2/3s of 1/4 cup Maple sugar
• 2/3s of 1/4 cup of brown sugar (not compressed)

Savory

• 1.71 lbs pork bellie
• 35g Dry Cure (added a table spoon a few days later)
• 2 smashed garlic cloves (size of my pinkie tip)
• 2 crushed bay leaves
• black pepper

Put the bellies in separate Ziploc bags with the listed ingredients and let them cure in the refrigerator for 10 days. They didn’t seem to lose  as much water and get as firm as my first Bacon endeavor. I smoked them for 2 hours at 200-225F using alder wood chips to an internal temperature of 150F. I added less smoke this time around.

The smaller Savory Bacon was very salty, though I had tried a piece from the smaller, thinner side. It was not releasing any water so I thought I had not added enough cure so I had added more. I could also taste the pepper, but not the garlic or the bay. Maybe a different section will have more of those flavors.

The sweet bacon tasted really good, not too sweet. I think for my first sweet bacon I had added too much sugar.

The pork bellie was from Western beef so It might not have been as good as the first pork bellie from Fairway Market.

Skin side – Looks great, like a piece of mahogany wood hand rubbed with Tung oil. I trim off the skin and discard it , but I should be making my own Fried Pork Rinds. This time I left more fat on the bacon when trimming off the skin.