Makin' Bacon

This starts a new label on the blog called "charcuterie."  That is, essentially the smoking and curing of meats.  We will be making venison sausage soon, as we do every year and I've been trying to expand what we can do with what we have access to, which I must say is a lot and we are blessed for it.

Well, not having a ton of time to get this going, I asked Mrs. 45er to get some straight curing salt when she did the groceries.  All they had was this:

It is a pre-mixed cure, so my ability to play around was limited.  I want to try the High Mountain stuff that dakota mentioned because I've heard good things, but I would have to order that and wait.  The good news is that we have 2 more pigs to go, so there will be plenty of bellies.  I did a quick look on-line and saw some recipes that gave me a basic idea of how to use the product and decided to play anyways.  It's just in my nature.  So, the basic recipe seemed to be about one oz per pound of meat.  I started with that as a base and added other things.  For the nice, big cut I decided to take NFO's advice.  I do love pepper...

Pepperific

So, this one is going into the bag just like this.  It is essentially:

1 oz/pound of Morton's Quick Cure (2/3 on the meat side, 1/3 on the fat side)
1 cup cracked black pepper

Most of the recommendations for bags to use are 2 gallon Ziploc bags.  I'm going to get some of those for trying smaller sections, but for a monster like this I used some brining bags I got from Sur la Table.  These worked wonderfully.  I got them to brine the turkey for Thanksgiving (a must, trust me) but I will get more before then.

Goodness in a bag

So, I zipped it up, folded it over and put it in the beer fridge.  Yes, you heard me.

Now, on to the other experiments.

Yes, that is a beer from the fridge.  I had to make room for the bacon.  :)  The Old Rasputin Russian Imperial Stout  goes well with bacon makin'.  

On the bottom, I added some brown sugar to the cure, so:

1 oz/pound of meat of Tender Quick Cure and
1 Tbsp of dark brown sugar

On the top, well that is going to be chipotle bacon.  I'm real interested to see out this one turns out.

1 oz/pound of meat of Tender Quick Cure and
1/2 Tbsp of ground chipotle chile pepper

And this is the ground chipotle I used:

Yum in a bottle

So now, we are at the "we shall see" stage.  I have learned a few things since this process started about harvesting the belly from the pig and what is considered "belly."  Pork belly being belly is about as much a misnomer as the pork butt is from the butt.  Also, these pigs were fabulously built but rather lean so you don't see the classic 3 to 4-inch-thick pork belly. I'm not too worried.  There is plenty and if this turns out, we'll be rolling in bacon, which is kind of a fantasy of mine.  ;)