Questions: Curing And Dry Aging Bear's Buckboard Bacon

[tx smoker]

As stated in a post yesterday, I am quite enamored with BBBB and am considering doing it with a different approach: cured and dry aged. After thinking through the process last night, here is the plan I came up with:

-Cure for 2 weeks +/- using cure #2 and start-up flavorings detailed by Bear
-Rinse and soak for a little while to desalinate
-Apply second round of spices as detailed by Bear
-Let sit in fridge overnight, maybe 2 nights
-Cold smoke for 6 to 8 hours
-Let sit in fridge another night or two
-Put in UMAi bag, weigh, and wait out the process

As amazing as the flavor of this stuff is, I can only think this would be a fantastic way to go about making it. My dilemma however is that I have very little experience curing and dry again meats. I did a bunch of stuff not long ago but it was all done pretty much at the same time, so the long-term experience is lacking. I guess where my real mental quandary comes in is the smoking process. I've never heard or read about anybody smoking meat that is to be cured and dry aged.....but it seems viable. I just wanted to take a minute and ask the question before wasting a bunch of time and meat or possibly making myself sick with funky meat Any advice or input would be greatly appreciated.

Perplexed in Lago,
Robert

 

[Magic Meat]

As stated in a post yesterday, I am quite enamored with BBBB and am considering doing it with a different approach: cured and dry aged. After thinking through the process last night, here is the plan I came up with:

-Cure for 2 weeks +/- using cure #2 and start-up flavorings detailed by Bear
-Rinse and soak for a little while to desalinate
-Apply second round of spices as detailed by Bear
-Let sit in fridge overnight, maybe 2 nights
-Cold smoke for 6 to 8 hours
-Let sit in fridge another night or two
-Put in UMAi bag, weigh, and wait out the process

As amazing as the flavor of this stuff is, I can only think this would be a fantastic way to go about making it. My dilemma however is that I have very little experience curing and dry again meats. I did a bunch of stuff not long ago but it was all done pretty much at the same time, so the long-term experience is lacking. I guess where my real mental quandary comes in is the smoking process. I've never heard or read about anybody smoking meat that is to be cured and dry aged.....but it seems viable. I just wanted to take a minute and ask the question before wasting a bunch of time and meat or possibly making myself sick with funky meat Any advice or input would be greatly appreciated.

Perplexed in Lago,
Robert

Wow just what I was looking for, someone else that has a similar idea of wanting to do a dry cure smoked aged bacon !
I know this is a older thread but it needs to be rekindled.
So I just started a week ago on the long journey of making a dry cure aged bacon. I however went really old school with the cure. I went with a 200 year old traditional dry cure formula that consists of:
1/10th the weight of belly in course sea salt
1/50th the weight of sea salt in potassium nitrate
1/20th the weight of sea salt in brown sugar..
I did a general check that the potassium nitrate amount made sense, it's a touch rich as far as today's standards are concerned but not out of the realm of safety by any means.
So this is my what I hope to be a well thought out plan hahahaa.
So far I trimmed up both slabs and removed the skin but kept 90% of the fat cap.
I rubbed the entire batch one shot of cure onto all surfaces, nooks crannies etc. as usual. I put the 2 slabs on top of each other in a large glass plate and put them in the fridge uncovered, I lost the typical
large amount of juice in the first 24hrs like normal, this is where I drift from the norm. So my thought process on this is wanting to drop water more then normal and not letting them heavily brine like a typical modern bacon. So I have been rotating and flipping both slabs twice a day, dumping the juice and replacing any salt with plain course sea salt only where there is patches where no salt is visible.
A week has gone by and the water loss has slowed considerably, down to a couple tablespoons if that a day and they are firming up nice.
So today I took them out of the plate and touched up any missing salt, gave them a light sprinkle with some fresh ground black pepper and slid them into ziplock bags and put them back in the fridge. They look great so far.
So my plan is to go another week in the fridge in the bags, if any significant amount of brine builds up I am going to dump it. Next weekend at some point I plan on giving them a good long soak in slightly cool water for probably 2 hours and pat dry then hang to form a nice pellicle then cold smoke below 80deg for 18-20 hours
with a very light apple wood. When smoking is complete I am going to brush on a very thin light coat of honey and hand press on as much black pepper as it will hold. Then hang it in my basement for a minimum of 2 months if not longer..
That's my plan and I am sticking to it !
I have the weights documented and pictures to go along with it for when I post a thread !
Baccuitto here we come !! You saw it here first lol