# Experiment 2, 43lbs of Tastebud Heaven



## cookfarms (May 1, 2017)

After batch one this last fall introduced my tastebuds to what bacon was really supposed to taste like... I started a search to find a second fridge so that I can refill our dwindling bacon rations and be able to try curing lunchmeat hams and canadian bacon. After deciding that the cool season was nearing an end and that I was going to have to increase my second fridge budget, a friend told me they were moving out of state, and needed to get rid of a fridge/freezer! So I rushed up to go get it, and the intense cleaning began of the freebie fridge. 

As we were down to rationing the last package of bacon for a special occasion, we had resorted to buying a couple of bland store bought bacon packages for some food experiments just to make sure we didn't waste the good stuff if the food experiment was a bust... Alas we started the next round! One belly of jalapeno bacon, one belly of maple bacon and two bellies of the NYT recipe we made last time.

Recipes that I drew inspirations for my flavor profiles from:

The NYT one we swapped out the apple cider, for a home roasted Full City Roast Sumatran coffee pulled as an espresso shot, and used maple syrup instead of honey this time.

cooking.nytimes/recipes/12349-home-cured-bacon

amazingribs/recipes/porknography/making_bacon_from_scratch.html

chaosinthekitchen/2010/10/home-cured-jalapeno-bacon/

I weighed out the curing salt to 156ppm and 2.25% salt for each cut of meat (same calculator as the last time I made it bacon), mixed in the desired flavorings, stuffed it in a 2 gallon ziplock, mixed and flipped daily for ~ 15-16 days. The bacon then aired out in the fridge for 5-ish days. After work I loaded a partial ring of wood, smoked the bacon for three hours, then cleaned out the ash, and reloaded a full ring of wood to give a nice long smoke overnight. After i awoke the next morning and went out to pull the meat out and the last of the coal embers were still burning, but the smoke had died down. I estimate about 10 hours of smoke was applied. The last batch we had was 16 to 18 hours over 2 days, but due to time restraints we'll try the 10 hour smoked bacon. :-) Still has to be better than liquid smoke store bought bacon! The bacon is currently airing out in the fridge for another week before I slice it, fry test it, and package it. We finally deemed it safe to eat the last package of bacon from the previous batch, just to remind us why we are waiting so long for a little bit of bacon.

I forgot to do a fry test before smoking it, but we varied the salt content on the last batches and the 2.25% was the winner per my wife.... So hopefully we are good! Enjoy the pics, I'll add the packaged pics after I get back from the Spot Prawn shrimping opener, and some rafting. :-)

Stocking up for the warm season!













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Curing in the fridge.













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Airing out before smoking.













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Smoke... MMMM.... Looks like I can fit one more belly in the smoker! Next time I'll smoke five bellies in one round. :-)













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Smoking away! The fan is just barely over the side vent, with the rheostat turned all the way down to make sure there is a good draw through the Smoke Vault.













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Overnight round of wood piled on... Mostly Cherry, with a couple apple and mesquite chunks hidden in.













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## SmokinAl (May 1, 2017)

The bacon looks real good so far!

Al


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## cookfarms (May 4, 2017)

Should this concern me? apparently one of the drying trays was more of a bare metal cooking tray and the meat on that one has a darker color on the bottom, but inside was a nice cured color...













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