# First time making bacon!



## bigboysmokehous (May 19, 2013)

After reading on here with all the different ways to cure bacon I decided to do the pop brine. I used 2/3 cups of sea salt instead of the full cup since we aren't huge salt eaters.













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__ bigboysmokehous
__ May 19, 2013






I picked up a 10 pounds pork belly and sliced it into useable chunks for in a pot.













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__ bigboysmokehous
__ May 19, 2013






After 16 days  I pulled it out of the brine, patted it dry and put it in the fridge for a day. Then I did three different seasonings. On the left is a maple syrup and brown sugar, middle is my dry rub I use on my ribs and pork and on the right I did an asian style.













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__ bigboysmokehous
__ May 19, 2013






After 8 hours of smoking I pulled them off, did a fry test and they were awesome. Couldn't really taste the asian one but could the rub and brown sugar.













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__ bigboysmokehous
__ May 19, 2013






Fried up nice and they were tasty after a 12 pack of Red Stripe while smoking it.













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__ bigboysmokehous
__ May 19, 2013






Let it sit in the fridge for 24 hours and then started to hand slice it up and then this happened when I got to the rub one. It was a bit thicker but was on the outside edge of the bacon. It was also the farthest from the heat source of the smoker but I was trying to cold smoke anyways.













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__ bigboysmokehous
__ May 19, 2013






The bacon was really really red. I did some searching and couldn't find anything that said good, bad or ugly. I decided it wasn't worth the risk of getting sick. Do you guys think the cure just didn't get into this? Was it ok? I rotated the meat stack every two days while it was curing. So it isn't like this was stuck in the middle of the pile the whole time. Was it because of it being last on the smoker and not getting the heaviest of smoke?


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## themule69 (May 20, 2013)

looks good. their shouldn't be a thing wrong with the red one.

happy smoken.

David


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## xutfuzzy (May 20, 2013)

For the red one, did you do a fry test for a stip?  If it turns pink, it cured just fine!  If grey, no so much....


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## fpnmf (May 20, 2013)

Looks great!!

 Dont worry about the red..

  Craig


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