Did my first pork belly yesterday and it turned out great. As usual I poured through a lot of past posts from the folks on this forum to get ideas on the various process steps, cure, recipes etc. I decided I wanted to try a cold smoke process but I did not have the SI cold plate or the A-Maze-N type product folks like Gregg use. I ended up using Pork Belly's process of turning up my 3-D to 250 to get the smoke going and then add my belly and turn down to 100.. It was in the mid-20's here in Wisconsin and this process worked great for me. Below are the details and pictures.
Started with 10LB belly from Costco.. They had some nice meaty ones on my last visit ($2.99/lb).
Used Kari's brine/cure recipe of 1TBSP of TenderQuick/Brown Sugar to pound of belly. (also added some Maple syrup)
Cured for 7 days in the fridge and flipped every day. Removed from the brine on Friday and rinsed and let sit in a cold water bath for 10-15 minutes( tip from Gregg on past concerns about bacon being too salty).
Started with 6oz of apple chips and followed the cold smoke process noted above for 2.5 hours.
Added some more chips and set temp to 200 looking for a belly temp of 150.
Took two more hours to hit 150.. Removed and applied a maple syrup/cracked pepper glaze and let sit over-night.
Sampled this morning and it was delicious!!! A couple of observations.
My meat slicer is 7" and I knew that was going to be an issue. I know there are a number of recommendations for larger 10-12" slicers but will probably just cut the belly's in half and have 5"-6" slices. Slicing all by hand would be a chore.
Bacon had some smoke flavor but I would have liked more. Next bacon attempt I will cold smoke longer or maybe add some hickory or maple.
The syrup glaze resulted in some burnt edges when fried this morning. My wife likes crisp bacon so that was Ok but I will omit this step on my next attempt. Lots of good looking brine recipes on the site and I will experiment more.
Started with 10LB belly from Costco.. They had some nice meaty ones on my last visit ($2.99/lb).
Used Kari's brine/cure recipe of 1TBSP of TenderQuick/Brown Sugar to pound of belly. (also added some Maple syrup)
Cured for 7 days in the fridge and flipped every day. Removed from the brine on Friday and rinsed and let sit in a cold water bath for 10-15 minutes( tip from Gregg on past concerns about bacon being too salty).
Started with 6oz of apple chips and followed the cold smoke process noted above for 2.5 hours.
Added some more chips and set temp to 200 looking for a belly temp of 150.
Took two more hours to hit 150.. Removed and applied a maple syrup/cracked pepper glaze and let sit over-night.
Sampled this morning and it was delicious!!! A couple of observations.
My meat slicer is 7" and I knew that was going to be an issue. I know there are a number of recommendations for larger 10-12" slicers but will probably just cut the belly's in half and have 5"-6" slices. Slicing all by hand would be a chore.
Bacon had some smoke flavor but I would have liked more. Next bacon attempt I will cold smoke longer or maybe add some hickory or maple.
The syrup glaze resulted in some burnt edges when fried this morning. My wife likes crisp bacon so that was Ok but I will omit this step on my next attempt. Lots of good looking brine recipes on the site and I will experiment more.