Makin' Bacon!

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cookking

Sous Chef
Joined
Nov 28, 2003
Messages
683
It's official! I made the brine and dry cure rub last night and now the pork bellies are brining and curing. I have them in the fridge at my office where there's more room and nobody is in and out opening the door.

Brining
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Curing
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I had enough extra brine left so I decided to brine that duck that's going be going in a gumbo this weekend. It'll get smoked later this week.
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You know the hardest thing about smoking a duck?
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Keeping the paper dry! ;D ;D :eek: :cool:
Could that be considered a "Duck Fattie"?
 
bigwheel said:
Looking mighty special. Great job.
Thanks! It's coming along nicely. below is a picture of what the one with the dry cure rub looked like yesterday. Notice the amount of liquid accumulated that's being drawn from the pork belly. I'll try to get a picture of each slab later today. Been busy here and haven't had much time to post anything.

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Oh man you're gonna love it! Cut it into peices 1 inch long and `1/4 x 1/4 fry em up crispy on the outside and when you bite into it......pure goodnesssssss.
 
I almost forgot to update this. The slabs are in my Smokin' Tex smoker this morning taking some nice hickory smoke. Pics later today.
 
Those two slabs of pork bellies finally got smoked today and here is how they looked before and after about four hours in my Smokin'Tex.

Ready to go into the smoker. This is the one that was brine cured.
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This one was dry rub cured. I coated this one with fresh cracked black pepper for what else but, Peppered Bacon.
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In the smoker
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Done and ready to come out
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I thought I got a couple of pictures before wrapping them and putting them in the fridge until tomorrow. I guess I forgot, I had to get to work. I'll slice them up tomorrow evening.
 
Not to steal your thread but I cured and smoked some back bacon, a/k/a Canadian bacon recently. I cut some of it thick like a smoked chop.[attachment=2:3t9nhjoq]b1 (Medium).JPG[/attachment:3t9nhjoq]
[attachment=1:3t9nhjoq]b2 (Medium).JPG[/attachment:3t9nhjoq]

Thick cut with scalloped potatoes and Matanuska Valley peas.
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Griff, no problem. Yours looks really good!

Sliced up the bacon tonight!
Have I ever mentioned I hate slicing? Maybe it's the POS slicer I have(Toastmaster). I need to remedy that when I find a good one at a good price.

I actually almost forgot to get pictures as once I got started and had bacon fat hands I got rolling. I did manage to get a couple though.

The peppered version. I had to cut each slab in half before slicing they were so big.
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Sliced
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I cooked a few slices in the microwave while packaging it up. Really pretty darn good if I must say so myself. Definitely has a good hickory smoke flavor!
I think I'm set for a while as I ended up with 12 packages of at least 1 lb each. A few are about 1.5 lbs and 3 packages of cooking scraps. I'm definitely going to be cooking some green beans with some of these scraps real soon.

I guess I'll hold off on the other slab(same size)for a while.

I'm going to be up in north Alabama cooking for the Red Cross again in about a month and I'm thinking about stopping by the slaughterhouse where these slabs came from. Can't beat the price at $2.00 a lb.
 

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