Attention All Bacon Makers!!

[SmokinEdge]

Okay I've got to give this buckboard bacon a try. It looks pretty darn good.
I have never done bacon of any kind as I'm afraid of messing it up. Can I ask the bacon pro's out there if they can share a recipe for dummies? I am really intimated when it comes to the curing percentages and calculations. Is there something easy to understand for a new guy like me? I'm sorry for asking but I'll never know if I don't.
Thanks in advance.

You can get a lot of different answers to this question. There are many ways to successfully cure meat, everyone believes their method is best. That said, get yourself a gram scale to weigh the salt, cure #1 and sugar along with the meat piece to be cured. The rest can be applied by eyeball but nothing more is really needed. If you are math challenged then use a cure calculator such as Digging Dog cure calculator. Insert the meat weight and salt percentage desired and it will give you the weights of cure #1 , salt and sugar I believe. (I do my own math).

I like 1.5% salt
.5-.75% sugar
Cure #1 is default to .25%

Mix that up for your meat weight and apply the mix evenly to all sides as best you can, don’t get nervous just get all the mix on the meat piece.

Then put the meat in a zip bag or vac seal and refrigerate for 10-14 days. Meat is cured. Then smoke.

 

[DougE]

Just be aware that diggingdog calc combines the regular salt and cure and spits out the number for total salt. The recipe Edge posted is 1.75% total salt (1.5% salt + 0.25% from the cure) so if you want to start there, you need to enter 1.75 in the box for salt, otherwise it will add both together and give you 1.5% total salt. I don't really know why regular salt and cure were combined in the calc, but that is how he did it.

 

[Hijack73]

Dry cured for 16-17 days (which is longer than I normally go) with

.25% prague #1
1.6% salt
.75% white sugar

Most folks on here follow something pretty close to those ratios. I use a little less sugar than most.

I honestly can't remember exactly why I couldn't smoke these at 14 days - but I'm pretty sure it was my back going out. I've never had to freeze something to stop the curing process and extend the shelf life, so I am curious as to how it tastes, especially with me not using a vac seal and just tossing the 2.5 gallon ziplocs with the meat straight into the freezer.

IMO - bacon needs to be a little salty - I do use the diggingdog calculator so all in all it's 1.85% salt.

 

[SmokinEdge]

IMO - bacon needs to be a little salty - I do use the diggingdog calculator so all in all it's 1.85% salt.

If you use DD calculator and you plug in 1.6% salt the calculator allows for the salt in cure #1 at .25% so all in salt will be 1.6% and the salt number they give you will be for 1.35% then when you add the .25% cure you get 1.6% salt which is what you plugged in.

 

[Saul D]

Yep, buckboard bacon. I do it all the time.

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I tried making bacon for the 1st time with a 5lb belly. Turn out great! However, I can buy an 8lb butt for less than I paid for the pork belly. I got 2 butts in the freezer, gonna try buckboard bacon next.
Here’s my plan:
Leaving the fat cap on,
cutting a 2-inch slab off the top to make bacon,
Then either smoking the rest for pulled pork, or making country style ribs (gives me something to smoke while waiting for the bacon to cure).