Bacon question
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snoweric how did you prepare the bacon? Vacuum, dry rub, pickle? Did you rinse and soak after curing? A few more details will help. The rind from my experience doesn’t have that much effect on how the salty the bacon turns out.
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snoweric it is usually recommended that you at least soak it twice for 20 minutes. After that I would cut a slice and fry it up. If it is still too salty try another soak or two until you get the results you want.
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snoweric in the past I would end up soaking my strips before using, now soaking until I get to my saltiness level before smoking works.
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snoweric in the past I would end up soaking my strips before using, now soaking until I get to my saltiness level before smoking works.
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This something I read on the wed a couple of years ago and have been doing it and like the finished product.
Weigh your pork belly skin off.
Figure the amount of cure you will need.
Divide that into 1/3rds.
Rub 1/3rd of cure on both sides of belly. and wrap in plastic wrap.
Let it cure for 4 days. Open and put one more third of cure on the meat side and rub in and rewrap.
repeat after 4 more days.
after four more days unwrap and give it a quick wash under cold water and then soak in cold water for 20 to 30 min.
Let it air dry unwrapped in the fridge over night.
Then you can process it any way you like. I cold smoke about 4 hours or untill it gets a nice light smoke color.
Loosely wrap in parchment paper over night, then cool in the freezer and slice .
Works good for me and has a nice cured flavor all through the bacon. And doesn’t come out over salted. -
mdseaside Interesting, that is closed to a whole muscle lomo type product. I will give that a try. Do you know if it is good to use with Canadian bacon too?
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That is a good question and something I had not thought about. I have made Canadian bacon with a Hi Mountain buckboard bacon cure. I think I will give a try. I will space out the rub in 3 steps and rinse and soak for 1 hour and then cold smoke for 2 to 4 hours till I get a good lite smoke color. Then I will finish cooking up to 145 internal temp via sous vide . What the heck never tried it that way but what’s the worst that could happen? I will just have to eat it.
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I use an XL spread sheet to calculate the amount of salt, sugar, and cure #1 for the dry rub cure I make.
The ingredient amounts in the rub are based on the weight of the belly used and gives a very consistent flavor if you enter the correct meat weight, and weigh out the ingredients accurately.
Since in is a dry rub cure, it is almost totally absorbed in the meat.
Like others mention above, once I apply the rub, I tightly wrap the belly in a zip lock bag or plastic film.
After curing in the refrigerator, I just give it a quick rinse in fresh water and let them air dry before smoking.
Since using this method, I find I do not need to taste test the cured belly before smoking. It just comes out right.
Paul
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I use an XL spread sheet to calculate the amount of salt, sugar, and cure #1 for the dry rub cure I make.
The ingredient amounts in the rub are based on the weight of the belly used and gives a very consistent flavor if you enter the correct meat weight, and weigh out the ingredients accurately.
Since in is a dry rub cure, it is almost totally absorbed in the meat.
Like others mention above, once I apply the rub, I tightly wrap the belly in a zip lock bag or plastic film.
After curing in the refrigerator, I just give it a quick rinse in fresh water and let them air dry before smoking.
Since using this method, I find I do not need to taste test the cured belly before smoking. It just comes out right.
processhead sure beats hand calculating. Looks like a nice spreadsheet.
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processhead sure beats hand calculating. Looks like a nice spreadsheet.
YooperDog
Maybe you, or someone else here can tell me how to share the .xls spreadsheet file with others here?I don’t see how to post any file type, other than .jpg/ pictures?
I guess if anyone is interested, I could email it to them.
Thanks -
processhead the best well known eq calculator I see shared on social media is http://www.diggingdogfarm.com/page2.html
The eq calculator is adjustable and I from what I see on social media most people prefer 1.8% salt 1% sugar .25% cure. Personally I like 2.2%salt 1.2%sugar .25%cure. I’ve made somewhere between 600-700 lbs of bacon since April '20 when I bought my new pellet smoker.
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Bacon question.
I tried my hand at bacon last year and it’s was extremely salty. Someone told me it was because it was rindless. Do I need to adjust the amount of cure or time spent in the curesnoweric if you want replicable bacon you need to know exactly how much of each ingredient you used every time.
Equilibrium method of curing is the answer; in my opinion everything else is wrong! When a recipe says “3 to 6lb piece of meat” and use X volume measurement for ingredient 1 you could be using 50% less/more of an ingredient 1. How could you ever get the same result …ok now off my soap box and back to letting everyone do their own thing.
2% salt 1% sugar .25% cure # 1 (sure cure) is a great base formula. Weigh your meat (belly) convert to grams (lbsx454) will get you close. You need to be able to measure by weight down to a gram. Waltons sells scales that go down to 100ths of a gram and you could buy from other places but we wont mention those. After making a batch if you want it more/less salty/sweet just adjust the % you used on your next batch. Just dont adjust the .25% cure.
I take full bellies slide them into a vac seal bag (2gallon ziplock works too). Mix my salt/sugar/cure in a bowl and I reach in with a spoon and sprinkle over the meat. Vacate the air and into the fridge for minimum 10days. 10days minimum…maximum what ever works. It cant get any more or less salty due to the fact you only put so much salt in there to start. Remove from bag and place in fridge for 24hours to form pellicle, cold smoke to desired amount or hot smoke to IT of 145 for USDA regulation of fully cooked pork. Place back into fridge for 24hours - 72hour to allow smoke flavor to mellow then semi freeze and slice.
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processhead the best well known eq calculator I see shared on social media is http://www.diggingdogfarm.com/page2.html
The eq calculator is adjustable and I from what I see on social media most people prefer 1.8% salt 1% sugar .25% cure. Personally I like 2.2%salt 1.2%sugar .25%cure. I’ve made somewhere between 600-700 lbs of bacon since April '20 when I bought my new pellet smoker.
deanlorensen Great looking bacon, Dean.
Yes, Digging Dog Farm was the origin of the data for my spread sheet. I just find working from the spread sheet to be handier for me, but the formulas and end result is the same. (I also don’t like to have to depend on someone else’s web site for critical data on the outside chance their domain goes tits up or something.Your bacon process description is nearly identical with mine. I agree, that this method is practically fool proof and totally repeatable. I probably would not even bother with wet brine curing for bacon.
Personal preference for saltiness and sweetness in bacon is subjective and that is what makes creating your own so nice since you can tailor the amounts to suit your liking.
Lately I have been using brown sugar on the recommendation of a buddy. I like the caramelized flavors you get when frying.
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processhead the best well known eq calculator I see shared on social media is http://www.diggingdogfarm.com/page2.html
The eq calculator is adjustable and I from what I see on social media most people prefer 1.8% salt 1% sugar .25% cure. Personally I like 2.2%salt 1.2%sugar .25%cure. I’ve made somewhere between 600-700 lbs of bacon since April '20 when I bought my new pellet smoker.
deanlorensen that is some beautiful bacon
. Very nice. -
deanlorensen Great looking bacon, Dean.
Yes, Digging Dog Farm was the origin of the data for my spread sheet. I just find working from the spread sheet to be handier for me, but the formulas and end result is the same. (I also don’t like to have to depend on someone else’s web site for critical data on the outside chance their domain goes tits up or something.Your bacon process description is nearly identical with mine. I agree, that this method is practically fool proof and totally repeatable. I probably would not even bother with wet brine curing for bacon.
Personal preference for saltiness and sweetness in bacon is subjective and that is what makes creating your own so nice since you can tailor the amounts to suit your liking.
Lately I have been using brown sugar on the recommendation of a buddy. I like the caramelized flavors you get when frying.
processhead funny you should mention the sugar/brown sugar. I just smoked a batch with brown sugar last weekend and my wife made a comment because of the extra caramelization. So the batch I put into the brine this week I went back to white. Im gonna fry them side by side to see how much difference there really is, and a little side by side taste test.
I also found out recently the digging dog calc, takes into account the 93.75% of salt in the cure result and adds it back into the salt % results. Doing it with normal math your adding in .23% more salt than digging dog. So big difference between 2.0 and 2.23salt? Probably not that most people are gonna notice?
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processhead funny you should mention the sugar/brown sugar. I just smoked a batch with brown sugar last weekend and my wife made a comment because of the extra caramelization. So the batch I put into the brine this week I went back to white. Im gonna fry them side by side to see how much difference there really is, and a little side by side taste test.
I also found out recently the digging dog calc, takes into account the 93.75% of salt in the cure result and adds it back into the salt % results. Doing it with normal math your adding in .23% more salt than digging dog. So big difference between 2.0 and 2.23salt? Probably not that most people are gonna notice?
My spreadsheet deducts the 94% salt content of the Cure #1 addition from the salt added to the rub in order to hit the actual percent salt target of the dry rub.
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YooperDog
Maybe you, or someone else here can tell me how to share the .xls spreadsheet file with others here?I don’t see how to post any file type, other than .jpg/ pictures?
I guess if anyone is interested, I could email it to them.
Thanksprocesshead unfortunately I don’t know how to attach that kind of file. Maybe there is someone out there that knows how to do it.
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That is a good question and something I had not thought about. I have made Canadian bacon with a Hi Mountain buckboard bacon cure. I think I will give a try. I will space out the rub in 3 steps and rinse and soak for 1 hour and then cold smoke for 2 to 4 hours till I get a good lite smoke color. Then I will finish cooking up to 145 internal temp via sous vide . What the heck never tried it that way but what’s the worst that could happen? I will just have to eat it.
mdseaside
Just got done trying Canadian bacon with the 3-step curing process. Cured for 12 days, cold water rinse and cold water soak for 30 min. put on racks and let rest over night in the refrigerator , then cold smoke for 4 hours. Then vac-pack and sous vide for 4 Hrs. at 155. Then cold water bath for 30 min. and put in the refrigerator over night (still in the bags). Next day open and try and slice .
Came out great. Did not lose any smoke flavor like the polish sausage. Will be doing it again.
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Nice looking. I haven’t tried Sous Vide with Canadian bacon, I might take the plunge.
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