Homemade bacon
Ingredients: •4 lbs of pork belly, skin on •1/4 cup of basic dry cure •1 tbsp cracked black pepper (optional) •1 tbsp garlic powder (optional) •large ziplock bag or sealed plastic container large enough to hold the pork
Dry Cure: •1 lb of Kosher salt •8 oz granulated sugar •2 oz of pink salt, approximately 10 tsp Take your pork belly and begin sprinkling the 1/4 cup of dry cure all over the belly. Top, bottom, and all sides. Make sure everything is coated, rubbing it into the pork.
Place this into a sealed plastic bag or container, placing in a refrigerator, and wait.
I say wait, but because you are looking at about 7-9 days before the next process.
About every other day, flip the bag or meat making sure to redistribute the cure liquid, a process called overhauling.
In seven days, check the pork for firmness. If it feels firm at the thickest point in the belly, it should be cured. If not, let it go another day before checking again.
Once you have reached the firmness, mine went for about 8 days, remove it from the refrigerator, and container, and rinse it under cold water. Pat dry with paper towels, and place it back into a clean, sealed container for one more day. At this point the pork builds up a tackiness that I preferred so that I could season the outside the following day.
Now is the day we have been looking for. The day to rub and smoke and slow cook the bacon. This step takes approximately two hours to cook, another hour or so to cool down, then you can begin slicing, and cooking the way you prefer to cook your bacon.
Mix the black pepper and garlic powder. Sprinkle over all sides of the cured bacon. Your next choice is to place it directly in the oven, or into your smoker if you have one. I have one, so I decided to light some coals, bring it to approximately 200 degrees, and place the pork inside, covered, skin side up, for roughly one hour. About 30 minutes in, I laid in my soaked cherry woodchips onto the coals, and let it smoke for about the additional 30 minutes.
At this time, I preheated my oven to 200 degrees inside the house, and finished the cooking process there, uncovered, on a wired rack.
Once the additional hour is done, check the temperature of the meat. You are looking at 150 degrees. Once you reach that temperature, remove it from the oven, and let it cool to room temperature.
Now is the fun part. Slicing it. If you have a really sharp knife, begin slicing into your desired thickness