how do I make canadian bacon?

[bossdogg]

thanks. yeah if figured the hickory would be pretty strong. how many hours should I let the smoke flow? I have a propane smoker so I can control how much smoke I put to it.

 

[Bearcarver]

Personally, it has been my experience that when smoking bacon, I had no creosote problems, and I have kept my smoke (electric smoker) steady at medium smoke for a good amount of time, with some bursts of heavy smoke. The only time I ever got any bitter taste from smoke was one batch of hickory smoked Salmon. I washed off all of the pieces & dried them & they were fine.
I have put smoke on bacon from 4 hours to 6 hours, and haven't had any problem. I like to put as much smoke as I can on everything. I don't think the length of time hurts anything, but too heavy for too long could. I keep my exhaust vent WIDE OPEN.

BTW: Bossdogg, You got me going----I did go out yesterday & bought 16 pounds of pork loin (two loins). I put them in cure & should be smoking them on the 28th.

BC

 

[eman]

Going to throw my 2 cents in here.
I also use a variation of shooter ricks cure . I have found that My CB
comes out ALOT better when cured for 10 days instead of the recomended 7 days.
After 7 days the loin doesn't seem to be fully cured thruout the piece of loin . Adding the extra 3 days does the trick.

 

[Bearcarver]

eman,
The temp in your fridge might be too cold for your cure to work properly. It should be about 37 or 38 degrees. Over 40* and the meat could spoil. Under 34* and the cure won't work. When I first started doing bacon, I couldn't figure out how to measure the temp of the meat, because the fridge would vary by as much as 9 degrees. For instance, on at 32*, off at 41*, or maybe on at 30* off at 39*. I didn't know what the actual meat temp was, so I put a bottle of water in the fridge, and inserted my meat probe in the bottle. Now when I brine something, I can hold the water in that bottle at 37* & 38*---no higher & no lower.
The only thing is, I use a separate fridge for my meats, because when you hold the meat in the fridge to 37* & 38*, you can't keep the freezer in the same unit at 0* the way I like. So I bought a small chest freezer to keep my meats below zero.

Anyway, it depends on how thick you pork loin is, and what temp your curing at. The ones I'm doing now are 2 1/2" thick, so the minimum curing time in my book would be 7 days. I will cure it for 8 days, check it out, and smoke it on the next day. It definitely doesn't hurt to keep it in the cure for a few more days, but not needed, unless the curing temp is too low, or you don't use the right amount of cure.


Hope that helps,
Bearcarver

 

[bossdogg]

I know there is a bacon section but since I started this journey here I will post results and q view here.
a 9lb pork loin, mortons tender quick, brown sugar, and a weeks worth of time.

I cut the loin into three reletively equal sized sections. I then measured out a tbs of each the brown sugar and tender quick per lb of meat. so that meant 9 tbs of tender quick and 9 tbs of brown sugar.

I then placed them each one into a gallon baggie and stuck em in my fridge. each day for the week I would flip the bags over so the cure would get to all sides of the loin. it actually formed a juice in the bag and I had read to leave the juice in there.

after a week I took the loins out of the baggie and rinsed them off with cold water. then soaked the loins in water in the fridge for two hours to leach some salt out. then drained and let em chill in the fridge till today.

I got em out and I love pepper bacon so I put olive oil on the outside of one and rubbed coarse ground black pepper on it. On the second one I had the idea to drizzle maple syrup on the outside of the loin while cooking and then got to thinking it would burn to bad on the outside. so I mixed up 50/50 apple juice with maple syrup and injected it in the loin. the third section I left plain to see which one I would like.

I was using hickory wood for smoke and was smoking at 225.

Here they are just on the smoker after a bit of time

here they are done.

the ends sliced off to check out the color. the left one is the injected loin. the center is the plain and the right is the pepper bacon. not sure why the left injected one is so much more darker then the other. all three have pink centers but the injected one is almost ham color.

pic of the injected one.

of course I tried all three and I like the injected one the most. the pepper bacon is good but is a bit dried out. the plain one was dry also. the injected was still moist. next time I plan on injecting all of em with applejuice. it makes a difference. now they will chill in the fridge and then get sliced tommarow.

 

[eman]

that is the color CB should be . Bright pink like a good ham.
that is why i am going to a longer cure time this go round. mine comes out half pink and half looking like a pork chop.

 

[rstr hunter]

I wonder if most commercial Canadian Bacon isn't made using Insta-cure#1 which many times helps make a pink color. Don't know, but do know it does that for sausage as a side effect of curing the meat.

 

[pops6927]

Nope, not impossible at all. I use a brine method vs. dry cure, just the way I was taught (my dad had a store and cured and smoked anything that moved and if it didn't he'd push it a little... lol!). I use:
1 gal. water
1 cup sugar
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup salt, non-iodized.
1 tbsp. DQ Cure #1 (or Instacure #1, but not Tenderquick! Too much salt!) You can get DQ Cure from Butcher Packer.

Now, you can modify that with ease; use 1 cup Splenda[emoji]174[/emoji] or equiv. for the sugar
Use 1 cup Splenda[emoji]174[/emoji] Brown sugar mix for the brown sugar
Use a smaller amount of salt; ¼ to ½ cup; also, use kosher salt or sea salt, it's sweeter.

You can pump your loin with brine and soak in brine in fridge for 7 days, or not pump and soak for up to 14 days. Use a baggie with some water in it to keep it from floating at the top.

Remove from brine, wipe off, do a fry test (but you should not need to soak it in water or potatoes or corn starch or silly putty or anything else, the salt level should be low enough).

Smoke at what you like with what you like, 240° is more than sufficient, cook to an internal of 155° - 160°. I personally like Mesquite, but I used to smoke Bull Durham's too if that says anything! lol!

Play with it, adjust it, make it your own, just enjoy!

 

[joeyiowa]

Hi all I'm Joe brand new here.
So I just got my DQ curing salt. 6.25%-propylene gylcol. (Sodium nitrite) so as fate would have it my instructional video disappeared. I have a 10 pound pork loin I want to wet cute into Canadian bacon. Anyone know how to measure this stuff correctly? I know not enough is bad and too much is worse lol.