my husband is off buying pork bellies for me. Good guy!
this is the last bit of bacon I have from my last batch
check it out!
not perfect but out of this world in my house!
all I did was read the book Charcuterie by Michael Ruhlman and found some stuff online from the State Cooperative Extension and a few other web threads. there are blogs on making bacon!
but what it boils down to for me is the smoke
so I use just Kosher salt to brine and with this batch I shook some pur maple extract and a vanilla bean into the salt brined it for 5 days (I found his rec of a week to be way too long for my small bellies) rubbed the brine off and let it dry for 24 hours (his recipe uses pink salt and maple sugar I just left them out salt cures bacon that is all you need really)
smoked in a combo of 1 part cherry 1 part alder and 1 part apple with a big piece of cinnamon bark tossed on at the end of the smoking
I used time and temp from the book hot smoke about 3 hours until the internal temp is 150f
I am not kidding you if you have not tried to make bacon well you have not lived!
anyway here is a pic sorry about the quality hopefully I will improve in time
mmmmm home made bacon bits from the trimmings
and finally the reason why you would go to the trouble of your own charcuterie is a fresh hot crab dip made from dungeness and the bacon bits and smokey salty fat drizzled on top (diet food
)