# White dots on freshly made bacon. Is this normal or safe?



## Downunda (Oct 28, 2022)

My second time making bacon from scratch. If just pulled it out of the baby and has these small white dots on it. Is this normal or safe to eat?


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## TNJAKE (Oct 28, 2022)

Post up your cure recipe and process. That will get you better help


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## Downunda (Oct 28, 2022)

Pre made curing rub (misty gully) correct amount of cure 60g to 1.5kg pork. Rubbed the pork with the rub using disposable gloves in an aluminium foil tray. Placed into zip lock bag and refrigerated, flipped daily for 5 and a half days. Hot smoked on Webber Q at 100-110 C


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## indaswamp (Oct 29, 2022)

White Dots after smoking? Or were they there prior to smoking?


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## Downunda (Oct 29, 2022)

indaswamp said:


> White Dots after smoking? Or were they there prior to smoking?


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## Downunda (Oct 29, 2022)

It looked like the meat had absorbed I little more water before smoking it. It looked slightly different to the other cut I had prepared at time. The spots were obvious after smoking. 

I have taken a thin slice off and it doesn't appear to be below the surface.
I tried a small slice from underneath, smells and tastes good.
The meat felt normal and smelt good before soaking and smoking.


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## indaswamp (Oct 29, 2022)

Explain your curing process...did you inject brine? Did you wet brine? And what brine was used? Sounds to me like it was something in the brine....


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## TNJAKE (Oct 29, 2022)

indaswamp said:


> Explain your curing process...did you inject brine? Did you wet brine? And what brine was used? Sounds to me like it was something in the brine....


It's a pre-mixed dry cure from "misty Gully". Sold in Australia. We had another member recently that was using that


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## chopsaw (Oct 29, 2022)

Downunda said:


> If just pulled it out of the baby and has these small white dots on it.


Is that supposed to be bag ? Like a ham bag ? 
It looks like fibers from a ham bag post smoke to me .


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## Downunda (Oct 29, 2022)

Wow... nice hams. I'm going to have to read up on how to make some ham now.

 It was meant to read BBQ not baby. Auto corret. No bags were used.

One of the cuts of pork I uses was boneless leg, it was the one with the dots. It was a cryo vac leg roast from the supermarket. The other was pork belly from the supermarket


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## Downunda (Oct 29, 2022)

I've just sliced it up. Looks like roast pork up towards the top in the middle. Some of the fat was like clear jelly.
I cut some off and cooked it in the fry pan. The bottom tasted like bacon, the top like salty pork. Now I'm concerned that I probably shouldn't have eaten it and now worried I'm going to get food poisoning.

I think I'll feed this to the dogs over the next week or so.


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## TNJAKE (Oct 29, 2022)

You never explained your curing process. How you smoked it. Or any other details of importance that help us help you. Fwiw if you are convinced the meat is bad, please don't feed it to your dogs.


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## SmokinEdge (Oct 30, 2022)

Downunda said:


> Pre made curing rub (misty gully) correct amount of cure 60g to 1.5kg pork. Rubbed the pork with the rub using disposable gloves in an aluminium foil tray. Placed into zip lock bag and refrigerated, flipped daily for 5 and a half days. Hot smoked on Webber Q at 100-110 C


Ok, I’ve researched the Misty Gully cure web page and they do not list any bacon cure, only cure #1 and #2 and other salts, but other vendors do carry their bacon cure in regular and in maple, I’m not sure which you used. I’m also not able to find the ingredients for any of their bacon cures so I have to guess at salt concentration. That said, you noted 60g per 1.5Kg meat. This equals 4% cure mix to meat by weight. If the majority of the ingredients are sodium then I’m going to guess about 3% sodium (salt) by weight. Given that I’m going to further guess that the small white dots are in fact salt crystals. I’ve seen this effect in some old school dry rubbed hams that I’ve done in the past where salt was in the 4% range.



Downunda said:


> I've just sliced it up. Looks like roast pork up towards the top in the middle. Some of the fat was like clear jelly.
> I cut some off and cooked it in the fry pan. The bottom tasted like bacon, the top like salty pork. Now I'm concerned that I probably shouldn't have eaten it and now worried I'm going to get food poisoning.
> 
> I think I'll feed this to the dogs over the next week or so.


This makes me question your application of the cure mix, or question the mix it’s self as far as the blending of nitrite evenly.

My suggestion would be next time use cure #1 at .25% by meat weight and salt no more than 2% meat weight, sugar to whatever your taste is for sweet. This process is 100% effective and repeatable.


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## chopsaw (Oct 30, 2022)

Downunda said:


> No bags were used.


The typo made me think you used a bag . You didn't so that rules that out . You can see where the fibers stuck to the ones I posted , and it resembles what you have . My next guess would be salt crystals , but what ever guess we put out , 5 1/2 days in the cure is not long enough . The fact that some of it is uncured proves that . Find a proper method and start over . I very seldom tell someone to toss something , but in this case I would trash it .


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