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There is an ongoing obsession with Bacon, Avocados, Kombucha and a variety of other niche food products nowadays. Speaking from my own obsessions with all of these items I do not particularly have issue with that, however I do believe with a little prep you can find out how much better you can make these products.

I truly believe, if you create these products yourself, you will realize the loss of quality in mass produced foodstuff. My giant caveat is that I will 100% continue to buy this “lesser quality” item, because I simply do not have the time to do this myself all the time to support the quantity I and my wife consume.

Today, I want to talk Bacon. Not bacon recipes, not chocolate covered bacon or bacon milkshakes, but the pure and simple item. Pork Belly, Salt, Sweet and Smoke. Bacon is cured pork belly with smoke for added flavor. The entire process takes me approximately 1 week from cure to table.

The Purchase: Purchase yourself some pork belly. a decent slab will do, I typically purchase 10 lbs from Costco or my local market, but you can get it anywhere someone is slinging meat. Pork belly can come thin with skin off or thicker with skin on and everything else in between. It really doesn’t have too much size loss so what you see is approximately what you get. I like whole slab with skin on so i can determine my destiny.

The Prep: Once you have your glorious piggy part, you will need to rinse it and if desired trim it. You CAN trim off the extra thick fat portion if you so choose, but it is not required. The benefit of removing it is as follows:

• Provides you with strips of pork fat to turn into other products IE. Pork Rinds (Fried bacon fat), Smoked strips, cooked up for tacos or other culinary treats.
• The skin/fat side is tougher, can be a tougher piece to chew through when you just want the softer bacon. I haven’t had issues with it, but i render some of that down a lot in cooking most times; just preference.
• Without that portion, there’s more contact area for the smoking process and the curing to touch.

Fun fact, if you leave it on and smoke the bacon, it is easier to just pull the whole portion off later. You will be left with a side of your bacon that looks less smoked/cooked, but its fine.

If you choose to remove it, take one corner and a sharp knife and just trim the desired layer off.

The Cure: To add the nice, salted, cured and preservation aspect to our pork, we need to make a cure. Essentially the cure will use salts to pull the moisture out of the pork belly and kill bad bacteria. It adds great flavor of course, but gives it the signature salty nature you expect from Bacon.

A basic cure consists of:

• 0.35 ounces Kosher Salt (Per 1 pound).
• 0.25 ounces Brown Sugar (Per 1 pound).
• 1 tsp Prague Powder #1 or Pink Curing Salt (Per 5 pounds).

If you have in the range of a 10 lb Pork Belly I typically will just throw together:

• 3 ounces Kosher Salt.
• 2 ounces Brown Sugar.
• 2 tsp Pink Curing Salt.

I am NOT a chef, I am a regular fella who likes to make tasty things and I find that my method is not an exacting science. THERE ARE REASONS FOR MEASUREMENTS. I invite people to research more about the science and process to ensure you have safe eating habits, but for curing, then smoking, then properly storing and likely pan frying to eat… you will be fine. You will be safe and you will be happy. Wing it and if it doesn’t taste good, adjust. there’s so much Brown Sugar and Salt its hard to not enjoy this.

At this point you have rinsed your pork belly and put it in a bag (if its big enough I have been known to use a trash bag, UNSCENTED GUYS!!!). You will take this cure and just rub your pork down till all of your cure has been used. Close up that bag and throw it into the refrigerator.

So for the next 7 days you will find your bag filling with fluid, It becomes a wet brine that you will want to flip the slab each day to ensure good coverage. Keep it in the fridge this whole time and this is the important cure part. Its getting its flavor and killing the bad stuff.

The Rinse (AKA Piggy Spa Day): Assuming you start one weekend you are now at the next weekend. Its smokin day! You should have been flipping it each day and you now have a firmer, darker looking meat. You want to give your belly a bit of a rinse and get all of the cure off. Just run under a cold faucet in your kitchen rubbing it all off. Throw this rinsed slab onto a baking rack and blot the hell out of it with paper towels. You want it dry or at least lacking in pooled moisture. We will be adding this back into the Fridge, this time on the rack, exposed and uncovered. As it sits dry in the fridge it will slowly get tacky or foggy looking, maybe rubbery to the touch. This texture is what the smoke will adhere to. We want to do this minimal 4 hours. I have heard recommendations of overnight, but I typically just do the 4 hours. Wake up, Coffee, Rinse Pork Belly, Dry, wait 4 hours and fire up the smoker.

The Smoke: Finally, we have arrived. I will not go into smoker details as I assume we know its usage for this article. Target Temp for the belly is 150° F. I smoke at 225° F – 250° F for 20 lbs of pork belly for approximately 2 hours until I reach my 150° F internal temperature . I use Apple Wood cause I want that sweet taste, but of course it is ALL preference. This is not my exact science, there are a ton of different temperatures and suggestions. This just happens to be the half-assed way I do it and guess what… I get bacon every time. I like to build up a lot of smoke at the beginning with high heat and just let the whole thing lower naturally over the course of the smoke. I end on a lower temp and not as much smoke and this works well for me.

The only thing left at this point is to pure and simple eat it, share it, store it and most importantly… enjoy it. Bacon of this caliber is awesome and there are a million and one ways to use it. Go Nuts and I believe in you that you can do this!