Bacon, bacon, bacon - that's what this post is all about, and if I had it my way, that's all I'd need to survive in this world.
Helen and I were shopping at Sparrow's Meat Market (they should host bar nights too, just to take advantage of their name, there's already a gym associated with it, so all the components are there) in Ann Arbor one Saturday after attending the farmers market and saw that pork belly was available for just $1.69 a pound. So, we picked some up, froze it, and later made tasty braised pork belly. Later though, we realized, duh! - we can make our own bacon. And we love bacon, and haven't really found a decent, reasonably priced bacon provider in the area, so let the bacon creation experiment of 2009 begin!
We picked up 2 lbs of bacon from Sparrow's, and after letting it sit around for a while in the freezer, we got some pointers and pink salt (aka saltpeter aka sodium nitrate) from Walsh's friend and housemate Nels. After allowing the pork belly to thaw, Helen mixed up the curing rub for the bacon, which included Kosher salt, pink salt (not too much though, cause that shit is toxic at high levels), sugar, some pepper, and maple syrup. Curing is decidedly simple - it just requires about 7 days in a container in the fridge with daily flipping of the meat and emptying out liquid expelled from the meat.
After 7 days (or less) the pork belly is cured (you can tell, because the cut firms up due to the expulsion of water from the tissue via fancy salt action). Once the meat is cured, you're supposed to rinse the meat well to remove any left over rub, and let it rest for 24 hours in the fridge to allow the salt to distribute evenly - we didn't do this (which led to a slightly salty bacon). We then slow roasted the bacon for about 2.5 hours at 200 degrees, to get the temperature of the meat up to 150.
Finally, time to smoke the meat! We don't have a smoker, so we used a standard grill, with hardwood charcoal for the fuel and wood chips soaked in water to provide the smoke. After a bit of time in the smoker we had this beautiful hunk of bacon:
Before cutting it, we first let it sit over night in the fridge to firm up for easier cutting. And finally, we have our delicious, home-made bacon:
