Deepwoodsbutcher and cdavis it is probably my favorite bacon I have made. Sweetness from maple, a little raspberry flavor up front, jalapeño flavor but no heat. I also make a pretty mean apple pie bacon which was my favorite before the black raspberry jalapeño maple bacon.

I make a good apple cinnamon bratwurst that is a base brat recipe with extra pie spice and cinnamon with finely diced Granny Smith apples that is super delicious. I have also done that style with a little bourbon mixed in with it instead of just water. It’s fantastic

calldoctoday it is fennel seed like you would put in Italian sausage, but you toast the seeds in a hot skillet with no oil, just to open them up and the flavor profile becomes sort of fruity. It is something I once tried on cold smoked salmon for the brine and knew I had to do it on ham too. For a 12 pound ham, I use about a tablespoon of whole fennel seed.

Forgot the jalapeño part! After it is smoked, do this:
Mash the jalapeños with a little bit (smallest amount as needed) in a mortar and pestle until you have a light paste. You will wear disposable gloves to rub the green paste thinly onto the smoked bellies and the refrigerate them for 6-12 hours until cold before slicing them into bacon. Do not brine with pepper slices in the mixture. It tosses your alkalinity out the window and can allow bacteria to prosper in the brine mixture- brining removes and prevents bacteria growth. Don’t waste product and 7 days of waiting by doing any method with peppers in the brine.

Dave in AZ Took me a while to find the recipe. It is for a 3# side of salmon
1 gallon water
24 grams sea salt
15 grams maple sugar (can use brown sugar if you like)
4 grams of cure salt #1
The spices are to taste. I don’t measure them honestly. Maybe like a 1/2 cup black peppercorns, 1/4 cup red juniper berries, a couple crushed cinnamon sticks, 1/4 cup fennel seeds, 1/4 cup mustard seed, a handful of whole crushed nutmeg. I crush the peppercorn and nutmeg at separate times in a tea towel. Roast the spices in order of hardiness, with fennel and mustard seed last. Dry skillet, 30-60 second toast for each spice. Keep them moving in the skillet so nothing burns. Boil everything in the water then add ice to get up to the required amount of brine solution. A gallon of water is about 8 pounds or so, so I zero my scale with a brining bucket (or large food safe container) on it then add the brine solution and stir in ice until you have a gallon of water and it reaches about 65-68F. Do not add fish to hot brine. I cure my salmon for 3 days or until the fish becomes pretty rigid. I then soak the salmon for 4-6 hours in distilled water to draw out excess salt then cold smoke.

http://www.diggingdogfarm.com/page2.html
Use this site for the cure ratio. You will need a reliable scale for this. It all depends on weight. Make sure you zero the scale to account for the weight of bowls or containers you are using so it doesn’t throw off the meat:ingredients ratios.
Buy cure salt #1, and for a single belly, the smallest package you can buy will likely be enough. I buy 10 pound buckets, and make bacon 2-3 times per month, and a bucket lasts me over a year.
Mix up the brine formula, put that plus the belly into food safe bags (I cut my belly in half “hamburger style” so I can still get full slices when I’m done, and I use Ziploc 2 gallon bags- 1 half of the belly in each bags).
This will cure for 7 days in the fridge. Suggest using a cookie sheet under the bags in case they leak. You can always wrap the bags up tightly in plastic wrap to help with this as well. Every day, just pick a time that works for you so it is consistent, you want to flip the bellies over. This allows even brining and also makes you feel involved and important while the brine does its thing!
After 7 days, remove the bellies, rinse them very well under cold water to remove excess salt (some people soak them for a few hours, but I never have and my bacon is fantastic).
Here is the real divider amongst the bacon-making community: smoking. Some hot smoke and some cold smoke. Either way it is great. You just do you here and see which method you like more. Being winter, it is a great time to try cold smoking. If you have an offset smoker, lighting a fire in the smoke box is a bad idea. Buy an A-Maze-In Smoke Tub or maze tray (tray holds more pellets). Cold smoke for 4-6 hours based on flavor preference.
I hot smoke at 225-250 for 4 hours. Either way, still fry it or bake it when ready to eat. If you’re great with a knife, cut the skinniest slices you can. A slicing knife works better than a regular kitchen knife does. Eventually buy a decent deli slicer. Keep an eye on Facebook market place in areas where there are hunters. Some areas are better than others to search for this stuff.
So cure 7 days, flipping it. Smoke it. Cut it. Cook it. Eat it. Repeat it.

I’ve made jalapeño popper sausages from scratch seasonings. Ground 5# of bacon (smoked but not fried or baked) with 15# of pork trim and shoulder. Grinding them together really blends the bacon flavor pretty evenly. I used some jalapeño powder to avoid the pepper crunch and added that to my base bratwurst seasoning blend. Froze a block of cream cheese and hand mixed the cubes (1/4” cubes) into the seasoned meat mixture. Also added a little Sure Cure to the blend. It was super delicious!

glen it is truly amazing. I cooked up 4 links for associates to try. Have to have special protocols in place to give out samples to customers right now so they did not try it first. I just explained how the flavor profiles share so many similarities and they were hooked.

I would not use both. I will say that I am not saying this out of scientific research, but just in that both additions will help retain moisture levels and using both might end up being sort of overkill. Sure gel helps in the blending of proteins and lipids for a smoother final product. It all depends on your desired final product though. I personally don’t like any smear on my fat pieces that are tossed in. Some people want a commercialized and super emulsified product. To me, bologna should be smooth but not paste-like such as in hotdogs.

GWG8541 I smoked them at a very low temp (150ish?) for about two hours with cherry wood chunks. It gave a little more bacon smokiness and also helped set the casing to the sausage inside. I was aiming to also get a little more moisture level to account for the pepper juice in a fried popper but it didn’t come out in that regards. Still was a great addition to smoke them though!

processhead my default bratwurst recipe already contains clove, nutmeg in generous proportions, cinnamon, coriander, salt, and ginger- much of the same traditional holiday spices as in my pumpkin pie spice and Christmas desserts, or an apple pie. I do make an apple cinnamon bratwurst at work from a seasoning packet that is very tasty as well.
But the sweetness is very well balanced by the coriander and salt, and the extra cinnamon cuts out sweetness with its natural bitterness. The end product is a balanced and very smooth bratwurst with just a flavor after the chew of like “hey man, this is good eggnog!”
Also is super good not in a casing but being used for breakfast with French toast and pancakes

Congratulations!! What a wonderful Christmas gift!

Cold phosphate is something I have both used and emitted from bologna. They’re good both ways in my opinion so I would try both ways and see which you prefer. If you order cold phosphate and don’t like the bologna with it, you can use it in other luncheon meats or something like a ham.
As far as particle definition, I personally find that a silkier emulsion akin to a hot dog is my preference for the meat and then I use pork back fat or the fat cap off a butt and dice it up into 1/4” cubes and after mixing the meat and seasoning together, I mix in the chilled fat cubes. This way the cure in the meat still gets plenty of surface contact to cure the ft pieces but the fat stays separated from the emulsified meat mixture.

zbigjeff right! It’s like a blind taste test Pepsi vs Coke experiment where everybody says “I like X” but then chooses Y. I can’t do that with these though because I created these to sell retail, and legally I have to present what it is and have allergen info available.

Deepwoodsbutcher I actually have a packet of California ham spice I won in November from a Bunzl contest but haven’t used it yet. I probably should try it out!

johnsbrewhouse that’s what the cherry variety was that I used actually! Could not remember the name to save myself haha!

bocephus I got drunk the one time I have ever been drunk and my last drink that night was chocolate cherry Mike’s Hard. Of all the Kraken rum, Bird Dog, and beer I had, the Mike’s Hard put me over the edge. Took over a decade to try the flavor combo again and not want to get sick.

I have used both my own recipe as well as a store bought salmon brine mix from Hi Mountain. Both were excellent but also different enough that I have preferences for the usage of the fish after curing. I use maple sugar or turbonado sugar, curing salt #1, and a small amount of sea salt. I toast in a dry cast iron skillet some black peppercorns, fennel seeds, cinnamon stick, and (red or purple) juniper berries. Bring all spices to a boil in water and then add ice to quickly drop the temp to about 65F. I tend to make roughly 2 gallons of brine solution so that I can cover a few sides on Alaskan or preferably Faroe Island salmon. I cover it completely in either a brine bucket with a plate to keep it all submerged, or I use food safe brining bags. Urban Kitchen makes a good inexpensive brine bag. I also like to use skin ON salmon when I cold smoke because it keeps the flesh together much easier during brining and smoking. I don’t cut the skin when I am slicing the lox.
I am in NE Ohio so if I want to cold smoke in the summer, I use a smoke tube like the A-Maze-N tube or maze and I put a foil tray of ice under the salmon. It is super easy to cold smoke when it is cold and then vacuum seal the lox and freeze for summer as well.

The whole recipe book would only be 20 recipes?