Making Bacon

We purchased a 5 lb pork belly from the Belmont Butchery and the better-half set up a cure (pink salt, garlic, pepper and crushed bay leaves). The pork belly cured in the refrigerator in a big ziploc bag. The better-half smoked the bacon today and there was much rejoicing.

After curing for about a week in the refrigerator:

With the cure washed off:

After smoking for about 3 hours (the better-half was looking for 150 degrees):

We sliced off a side for a photograph. We took off the rind shortly after this picture (the rind is the skin–there was still some hair and nipples):

Here’s an action shot of frying bacon:

Here’s the last piece before we descended on it like jackals and the book that made us think we could make bacon:

We sliced the bacon as thinly as we could and cut some into thick chunks which we’re calling lardons. We have a few slices to take by the Butchery as they requested a taste. I could taste some garlic in the background and some smoke. Mostly it tastes exactly like bacon should taste–a little salty and a little smoky.

As it turns out we have another pork belly that needs the treatment. The Butchery was less than thrilled with the overall quality of the original pork belly and dropped the provider from their list. They gave us another pork belly and said we could go ahead and proceed with the sub-par belly if we wanted because the original belly wasn’t bad just not awesome.

We decided to go ahead and finish the bacon making process as we considered this a trial run. As a first time bacon maker, I feel like this is pretty good bacon. It will be interesting to see how the next belly with its better quality will turn out. If I was already dancing a little jig, I may have to break out a moonwalk.