Although I have so far only made this as back bacon, I think it’s a great candidate for doing a proper ‘American’ style belly. Those crazy yanks tend to hot smoke (or oven cook) a freshly cured belly, and then slice and fry/grill as required when cold.
Bourbon BBQ Bacon
Equipment
- 1 Ziplock bag Or more as required
Ingredients
- 1 lump Meaty pork belly
- 2.75 % Salt
- 0.25 % Cure #1
- 2 % FCB House Rub
- 1 drizzle Maple flavoured syrup
Instructions
- Before you begin, skin and bone the meat if required, then consider cutting the pork up into manageable pieces. I prefer to do lumps that fit into a gallon sizes ziplock bag – usually 2 x 1.5kg bits from a 3kg lump.
- Mix all the dry ingredients together to make the cure and coat the meat.
- Carefully drop the meat into a bag and drizzle a generous amount of maple syrup over it and carefully massage the syrup to coat.
- Pop it in the fridge. The next day the cure will be working and have gone a bit sludgy. Add a good slug of bourbon (Jack Daniels or similar) and massage.
- Make sure the cure is in contact with the meat by folding any extra plastic under or around on itself – ideally secure with a rubber band.
- Turn every day for a fortnight – congrats, your pork is now bacon!
- Gently wash off the cure under a cold tap and pat dry – the aim is to lightly rinse it rather than scrub it clean!
- Keep it on a cake rack in the fridge for a couple of days to dry out a bit, put the rack over a a tray or plate with some salty water and keep the fat side up and ideally loosely cover with a bit of baking paper – this creates a microclimate that should help avoid it developing a hard outer that can be a problem in modern frost free fridges.
- Ideally if you have the kit, then cold smoke over a strong wood like oak for min 8 hours.
- Wrap in peach paper (like a non-waxy butchers paper) and leave to mature in the fridge for at least another week. We need that smoky flavour so subside a touch and the bacon to harden up slightly.
- For US style bacon: Give the bacon another light dusting of house rub then put in a hot smoker with more oak chunks at 225 F for 3-4 hours. Baste with a little more maple/bourbon mix for the last half hour.