How to Cure, Age and Smoke Bacon at Home - Best Homemade Bacon!!!
Author: Whats4Chow
Recipe type: Curing and Smoking / Charcuterie
Cuisine: Italian
Bacon is one of the real joys of life. Nothing beats the amazing aroma of bacon sizzling in the pan.... and home-cured bacon takes this to a whole new level. This video will show you how to cure the bacon and smoke the bacon.
Ingredients
- 2kg Pork loin, bone in, skin on
- 2lt + 2lt Water
- 300g Salt
- 140g Prague powder #2
- 15ml Garlic Powder
- 4 Bay Leaves crushed
- 15g Black Pepper
Instructions
- Measure out the Prague powder, salt, garlic powder, black pepper corns and bay leaves.
- Place the black peppercorns into your spice grinder and tear the bay leaves into this.
- Process this until reasonably fine. Add this to a pot along with all of the other dry ingredients, excluding the Prague powder.
- Pour in 2 liters of hot water. Bring this to a boil, reduce the heat and allow this to simmer for 10 minutes. Quick chill the brine by floating the pot in a sink of cold water, then put this aside.
- To prepare the pork loin, we need to debone it and remove the skin. You can also use deboned and skinned pork belly if you prefer.
- To skin the pork stand it up on its end and pull the skin back from the top. Use a sharp knife the peel the skin back from the fatty layer, leaving as much fat behind as possible. You can use the skin to make crackling.
- To remove the bone, start at the top with your knife, running it down the rack of ribs, using them as a guide for the blade. These ribs still have some meat on them, so save them for the barbecue.
- Place the prepared pork loin in a large non-reactive container.
- Once the brine has cooled add 2 liters of cold water and the Prague powder and stir this in until completely dissolved.
- Pour the curing brine into the container. The pork will float in the brine and you will need to place a bowl or plate on top of it to keep it submerged.
- Place the lid on the container and allow this to cure in your refrigerator for 7 days.
- After curing, remove the pork from the brine and pat it dry. Place the bacon on a rack over a roasting tin and allow this to air-dry for 5 days in your refrigerator.
- After the drying time, this is what you have.... a lovely, rosy pink colored slab of green bacon. This can be consumed as you would any regular bacon, however smoking the bacon really does add the extra dimension to its taste and aroma.
- Lift the rack up and balance it across the corners of the pan.
- Fire up your smoker and ignite a single burner furthest from where you intend placing the pork. If you're fortunate enough to be using a Smoke Daddy smoke generator, then the smoke will be chugging out in no time, and you can place the pork in the barbecue.
- Smoke the bacon for 3 and a half hours until you reach the target internal temperature of 65c or 149f. You will need a probe thermometer to monitor this.
- And there we have it. A beautifully cured smoked pork loin just waiting to be sliced and fried to perfection.
