Makin Bacon

[jeffinn]

Picked up this nice pork belly at the Eastern Market on Saturday. It weighed in at right around 16.5 lbs.

Just sectioned it up and put it in some Pops low salt brine. Counting down the days now till it hits the smoker!

pork_belly.JPG

• jeffinn
• Apr 11, 2016

 

[crazymoon]

JN, Keep us posted!

 

[tropics]

Jeff that is a nice size piece of belly, I have to ask what state is eastern market in? 

Richie

 

[jeffinn]

That would be in Detroit, Michigan.

 

[SmokinAl]

Nice belly!

Al

 

[jeffinn]

Okay, so the belly spent a few weeks in Pops low salt brine. I loaded it into my Smokin-It 3D smoker. and set it up for hot smoking (200 degrees with the internal probe set to 150 degrees). Loaded 5 ounces of sugar maple chunks (from SmokinLicious) into the box and let it go. It took about 3 1/2 hours to get to 150 degrees.Had a small amount of fat rendering but it was about what I was expecting.

Looking forward to tasting the sugar maple smoke (seems much milder/lighter than hickory).

All in all I'm happy with the result. I'll leave it in the fridge for a few days then get the slicer and vacuum packer out and package it up.

Got a few smaller slabs that I experimented with a bit, same smoke but covered one in fresh cracked black pepper and the other one was covered with maple sugar. 

I just noticed that I have some packs from March of last year that I need to bring to the upstairs freezer so we can start using them. The downstairs deep freeze holds alot of our fresh and smoked items, sometimes we forget what's down there. (As I've gotten older I find that I don't get downstairs as often as I used to).

 I'll post another pic once its sliced up.

bacon.jpg

• jeffinn
• Apr 28, 2016

 

[jeffinn]

All sliced and heading for the vacuum packer! I liked the lighter smoke from the sugar maple wood. Its ver tasty!

sliced_bac0n_1.JPG

• jeffinn
• May 1, 2016

sliced_bacon_2.JPG

• jeffinn
• May 1, 2016

sliced_bacon_3.JPG

• jeffinn
• May 1, 2016