1st time buckboard bacon

[lacomrade]

So, I want this to taste like my favorite brand of belly bacon and their curing ingredients are listed as follows after 1.water 2.salt (of course) 3.Sodium phosphate 4.sodium erythrobate 5. Sodium Nitrite
Other ingredients are a sweetener and "flavoring" (which I assume is msg) I'm guessing that with the combination of the 3 additives, you need to adjust the proportions in relation to eachother. Also, sodium Nitrite sounds extra caustic and perhaps not used for home curing? So I guess again proportions need to be adjusted there too.
I might want to mention that I have been a professional chef and I do understand good food practices.
Thanks very much for any considerations and info!

 

[Dave in AZ]

So, I want this to taste like my favorite brand of belly bacon and their curing ingredients are listed as follows after 1.water 2.salt (of course) 3.Sodium phosphate 4.sodium erythrobate 5. Sodium Nitrite
Other ingredients are a sweetener and "flavoring" (which I assume is msg) I'm guessing that with the combination of the 3 additives, you need to adjust the proportions in relation to eachother. Also, sodium Nitrite sounds extra caustic and perhaps not used for home curing? So I guess again proportions need to be adjusted there too.
I might want to mention that I have been a professional chef and I do understand good food practices.
Thanks very much for any considerations and info!

Welcome! I made a video showing exactly what you want, down below.
The sodium nitrite is the curing agent. In the US It needs to be 120ppm exactly for bacon, not more, which is 1.9g of cure#1 per kg of meat+water. The sodium erythorbate is the cure accelerator that is required to be used for immersion cured bacon, at 547 ppm max, so 0.5g per kg. which this is because water is the top ingredient. (Well, it is probably injected pumped, but similar). The sodium phosphate is something which is intended to make the bacon absorb and hold water, so it weighs more, for economic profit purposes... you don't need that.

There are several ways to cure bacon, almost all commercial operators inject a cure (nitrite, erythorbate, salt, sugar) solution calculated so the meat ends up with the required 120ppm nitrite and 547ppm erythorbate. Its fast, takes 1 day then smoke. But this and immersion method both rely on accurate before and after weights, and precisely calculated chemical amounts based on long experience for what those weights will be. It's a hard calculation and weight pickup target for home producers.

Vastly easier are the dry or wet equilibrium methods, which are 2 of the 4 FSIS listed methods. I like the wet or "equilibrium immersion" method.

Here, I just made buckboard bacon last week and videod it, here is a fast explanation of this easy process for home use. All ingredient amounts are correct and done to the USDA FSIS Processing Inspectors Calculation Handbook, exactly how a commercial producer would have to do for this particular method. Watch the video, it is exactly what you want, and the flavor is outstanding.

 

[nlife]

I HIGHLY recommend checking out the bacon recipe posted here on SMF. It's incredibly straight forward and you can tailor it to how you like it. I tend to prefer a little less salt in mine, though the standard recipe floating around here is pretty damn good.

 

[tallbm]

So, I want this to taste like my favorite brand of belly bacon and their curing ingredients are listed as follows after 1.water 2.salt (of course) 3.Sodium phosphate 4.sodium erythrobate 5. Sodium Nitrite
Other ingredients are a sweetener and "flavoring" (which I assume is msg) I'm guessing that with the combination of the 3 additives, you need to adjust the proportions in relation to eachother. Also, sodium Nitrite sounds extra caustic and perhaps not used for home curing? So I guess again proportions need to be adjusted there too.
I might want to mention that I have been a professional chef and I do understand good food practices.
Thanks very much for any considerations and info!

Hi there and welcome!

Yeah D Dave in AZ gave you one hell of an explanation!

If you are wanting to do this at home and not for commercial purposes (or not for big time operations at least) I think you will find it much easier to just do an equilibrium cure with Water, Salt, Sugar, and Cure #1 all in the proper amounts.

You can also add in any "flavor" seasonings as well provided they aren't things that will interrupt the Cure#1 from doing it's job.

A simple process is to use this calculator (basically the digging dog calculator man of us used to use in the past) BUT where it says "Weight of Meat in grams" this will instead be the Weight of the Meat + Weight of the Water used to equilibrium cure this pork butt.

Cure Calculator

forums.egullet.org

That calculator is 156ppm which is completely fine and above the minimum for bacon and well below any safety issues, but you can adjust that in the calculator if you like, though I would just leave it alone (I leave it alone for my stuff).

Then the process is simple.

1. Use that calculator punching in your Water + Meat weight. Water weighs 8.333 pounds/3,780grams per gallon. You will want enough gallons to cover your pork butt by at least 2 inches
2. I personally lower my Salt content to 1.65% and don't recommend going over 2%. For me 1.65% is perfect for basically all equilibrium cure or brining situations
3. Leave salt%
4. Get results
5. Pour half the water (NOT HEATED) you will use into your curing bucket/tub/container
6. Take the other half of the water (NOT HEATED) and start putting it in a blender along with your Salt, Sugar, and Cure#1 and blend it for a little bit to get it going and dissolved some (not perfect and NOT heated) then pour it into your curing container
   • Repeat this with the water and the dry ingredients you have set aside until it's all in the curing container
7. Put the pork butt into the curing container
8. Get a meat marinade injector syringe (I suggest a good metal one with multiple broadcast holes) and then draw the solution from the curing container and start injecting ALL OVER about 1.5 inches apart and ALL AROUND the pork butt and parallel along all sides and surfaces of the bone that is in the pork butt. Repeat at various depths. YOU CANNOT OVERDUE THIS so go wild and know it will drastically help speed up the curing process!
9. Put a gallon bag of ice or weight or something on top of the pork butt so it can't float up out of the liquid
10. Put the container in a fridge and let it cure so all of the cure spreads throughout the butt. Know that salt and cure#1 will travel at a rate of 1/4 inch every 24 hours.
    This thing is submersed so you will be getting 1/4 inch of salt and cure travel from the outside in, all around.
    Also, you injected the hell out of it with your mixed up solution so any you injected and any that can get into the holes will travel 1/4 inch in all directions INSIDE the pork butt as well. You are now curing Outside-In and Inside-Out
11. Figure how many inches thick the thing is and give the proper amount of days for the salt and cure to travel all throughout the pork butt and then add on a couple more days for good measure. When injecting a 10 pound pork butt like this, and going wild with the injection I usually give about 7 days minimum and it is good and cured
12. Finally, this is called an Equilibrium cure because the salt, sugar, and cure will move to equalize between the meat and the water in the container. At 1.65% you will never have more than 1.65% in the water or the meat when it evens out and that means it will never bet too salty!!! Many people will say to leave it in longer to get more flavor and such which is fine too because of the cure#1. I rarely have the luxury of leaving it over about 10 days because that's when a weekend hits and I then have the time to smoke, slice, vac seal, etc. the stuff.

I hope this helps you with your journey on curing and you have lots of fun and eat lots of good food as you sort it out. Pork butts/shoulders are a great place to start AND worse case you get ham instead of bacon. I now do my holiday hams out of pork butts :D

 

[SmokinEdge]

Do yourself a favor and dry cure that bacon. May not be same as your favorite store brand but it will still nock your socks off flavor wise. It’s more simple and takes up way less fridge space.

To the meat weight apply,

1.5% salt
.25% cure #1
.75-1.0% sugar

Mix this up, apply it evenly over all sides of the meat as a dry rub, I like to then eyeball granulated garlic and white pepper for flavor. Then into a zip bag, pull out the air and let it ride in the fridge 10-14 days. Then remove from the bag, do not rinse it clean as this is not needed here. Just smoke it and enjoy the fruit of your labor. This is fool proof and you will always enjoy it, also this process is 100% repeatable from batch to batch flavor wise it’s always the same. Just my o2.

 

[DougE]

Do yourself a favor and dry cure that bacon. May not be same as your favorite store brand but it will still nock your socks off flavor wise. It’s more simple and takes up way less fridge space.

To the meat weight apply,

1.5% salt
.25% cure #1
.75-1.0% sugar

Mix this up, apply it evenly over all sides of the meat as a dry rub, I like to then eyeball granulated garlic and white pepper for flavor. Then into a zip bag, pull out the air and let it ride in the fridge 10-14 days. Then remove from the bag, do not rinse it clean as this is not needed here. Just smoke it and enjoy the fruit of your labor. This is fool proof and you will always enjoy it, also this process is 100% repeatable from batch to batch flavor wise it’s always the same. Just my o2.

Absolutely do it this way. I can't count how many BBBs I've done this way.

 

[geostriata]

Other ingredients are a sweetener and "flavoring" (which I assume is msg)

Fwiw - FDA requires them to advertise MSG if they're using MSG, so you know they're not using it directly at least.

Then into a zip bag, pull out the air and let it ride in the fridge 10-14 days.

Also, I think this is the way to go (or better yet vacuum bagged) if you haven't made your own bacon before. I wish I did this the first time, lol.

 

[SmokinEdge]

Fwiw - FDA requires them to advertise MSG if they're using MSG, so you know they're not using it directly at least.


Also, I think this is the way to go (or better yet vacuum bagged) if you haven't made your own bacon before. I wish I did this the first time, lol.

I don’t do a bag at all. They are dry cured on a rack in the fridge.

 

[DougE]

I do all mine in a cheap zip bag, but would do it bagless (the zippers on the cheap bags mostly fail anyhow). Just haven't gone there yet.

I don't think the bag or vac sealing gains much of anything and may actually hinder the process of concentrating flavor in the finished product.

 

[SmokinEdge]

I don't think the bag or vac sealing gains much of anything and may actually hinder the process of concentrating flavor in the finished product.

Exactly

 

[geostriata]

I don't think the bag or vac sealing gains much of anything and may actually hinder the process of concentrating flavor in the finished product.

That's a good point. I use a chamber vac, so I do a loose vacuum so contents can move. I can then massage contents periodically. If you vacuumed too tight, it'd be problematic to the reasons you've mentioned. The zip lock, unless done carefully, can have cure contents stuck to the bag and not touching the meat. This is less than ideal. If I went with ziplock, I'd put it in water to push the air out and then seal. At that point, it'd probably be just as good imo.

As for the advantage to dry curing, I tried my first bacons dry cured and bag-cured. The bag is still looking great, the dry cured is not. I'm sure there's human error on the dry cured, but my point is that bag-cured, for me, has been easier to get correct.

 

[Hijack73]

I HIGHLY recommend checking out the bacon recipe posted here on SMF. It's incredibly straight forward and you can tailor it to how you like it. I tend to prefer a little less salt in mine, though the standard recipe floating around here is pretty damn good.

There are like 30 recipes for bacon on here. You can find ones that use garlic, ones that use pepper, ones that use maple, ones that uses 1.5% salt, ones that use 1.75% salt, some call for as high as 2% sugar.........

maybe 30 is low lol.

 

[SmokinEdge]

As for the advantage to dry curing, I tried my first bacons dry cured and bag-cured. The bag is still looking great, the dry cured is not. I'm sure there's human error on the dry cured, but my point is that bag-cured, for me, has been easier to get correct.

To be clear,,,, the bag works perfectly fine. The vac bag is the worst of all the methods because, in my view, it disrupts the natural diffusion and osmosis effects. The meat needs to be free so the sodium can do it’s magic. Bagged or racked is fine but I’m firmly against the vac bag for curing meats. Just me.

 

[geostriata]

To be clear,,,, the bag works perfectly fine. The vac bag is the worst of all the methods because, in my view, it disrupts the natural diffusion and osmosis effects. The meat needs to be free so the sodium can do it’s magic. Bagged or racked is fine but I’m firmly against the vac bag for curing meats. Just me.

Right, my point is that you can vac bag with the meat remaining free. On a chamber vac, you can get a tight seal that will never leak by setting the vacuum process to a few seconds. Better than ziplocks imo for leak protection. On a bag vacuum machine, I imagine you can just set the vacuum strength lower as well. So vacuum bagging isn't bad in itself, but putting a strong vacuum on the contents is.

This is how I do my snack sticks, but with a much much reduced time. It allows for more equalization within the bag without squeezing the sticks and allowing for the same amount of air in each bag.

 

[nlife]

There are like 30 recipes for bacon on here. You can find ones that use garlic, ones that use pepper, ones that use maple, ones that uses 1.5% salt, ones that use 1.75% salt, some call for as high as 2% sugar.........

maybe 30 is low lol.

I knew SmokinEdge would be along to post the one I was talking about. It's a very nicely balanced recipe.

 

[DougE]

I knew SmokinEdge would be along to post the one I was talking about. It's a very nicely balanced recipe.

I have been doing the
1.5% salt
.25% cure #1
.75% sugar
for a long while. It's nicely balanced, as you say.

 

[slavikborisov]

SmokinEdge recipe is fool proof ive used it numerous times..no issues at all and very simple and easy