Strolling through the grocery the other day, I caught the butcher putting out some good looking pork bellies. I've wanted to try bacon for awhile, so I grabbed a small amount (6 pounds), and immediately started searching for good recipes. I put together two different cures, one pepper and one sweet maples. Incidentally, picking up pink salt was slightly harder then I thought it would be. Anyway, so after slightly longer then a day of curing, and another day of drying (I used a bakers rack on a cookie sheet in the beer fridge), I put them in the UDS (well, it isn't really ugly ... but it is a drum smoker). Since I wanted to keep the fat from rendering, I modified the setup. Opened all 4 vents, and put my well soaked wood chips (mix of apple and cherry) in a disposable meatloaf pan. Then I got the chimney going and dropped about 4 good size burning chunks onto the top of the chips. I ended up doing this 3 times over a 6 hour period. Basically anytime the smoke slowed down I would check and replace.
Bacon turned out delicious, and while much smokier then I would have imagined, the wife gave it a thumbs up.
Bacon turned out delicious, and while much smokier then I would have imagined, the wife gave it a thumbs up.
