Making my own bacon

Homemade bacon 'n eggs

Pork belly in the drying pan

Fry bacon fry!

Slab of bacon, waiting to be sliced

This week I tried my hand at making my own bacon. This turns out to be even easier than making a ham. All one really needs is a pork belly, some salt, and a Tupperware container or something similar. Rather than relist what somebody else has said so much more elequently, here are the instructions I went by to make my own bacon.

So you click that link and give the process a look. What I did specifically was I went sort of crazy on the spices. I parked that pork belly in the fridge for a few days, and each night as I went to pour off the excess liquid, I was overcome with the desire to apply something different. Salt, black pepper, blackstrap molasses, ginger powder, plenty of Splenda, and more.

I don't have photos of the smoking process so you'll just have to read it and use your imagination. I fired up my grill, got the fire low, and put on plenty of hickory chips soaked in water. Using the nice remote temp probe I got as a gift, I waited for the temp to rise to 150°f. It took almost four hours, but reach it at last it did. It smelled very smoky, as it was. I immediately cut off some slices from the slab, and they were ultra-smoked. Okay, I admit I threw on a handful of dry mesquite chips at the end, right on the fire. This made a pungent cloud of smoke indeed, and the bacon is very smoked.

So at the top you see a plate of bacon and eggs. The bacon doesn't taste entirely bacon-y, but is very good nonetheless. Next time I think I will wet cure the meat like a ham. This bacon is good. My only regret is that I lack a rotary slicer to get perfect slices. Thick-cut bacon is okay, but after a while I was craving some nice uniform slices. So, stay tuned, I'm planning on more bacon adventures.