Making Homemade Bacon Two Recipes - Apple Cinnamon Bacon and Savory Bacon - Part 1
It is a hot sunny day and we are starting a fresh round of our favorite homemade bacon.
In Part 1 of Making Homemade Bacon Two Recipes, we will cover the recipes we use at our house, up to the point where they cure in the fridge for about a week. In Part 2, we'll cover getting the bacon ready for the smoker, smoking, and storage.
We get bonus points for making it easier for us to find recipes, organization is rarely our strong suit and it isn't pretty hunting for the recipes online when all we really want to do is make bacon! We've been making our own bacon for over 6 years now and we've tried many flavors and recipes, but these two are the recipes to which we consistently return. We are sharing my favorite Apple Cinnamon Bacon and Rob's favorite Savory Bacon. Our daughter really wants us to try a Jalapeno Bacon again, but we just haven't been able to give up our favs!
We started making our own bacon after a rather disturbing documentary. DH insisted he would NOT be eating pork from the grocery anymore. He simply couldn't bear the idea that he was participating in a factory system where farmers had to don lab suits and walk through a clean room to care for pigs that would die if exposed to the outside world. We'd already strayed away from grocery store beef in favor of venison, and had adapted our standards for the chicken we eat once we started caring for our own egg layers. This added change just seemed like a natural transition. We started looking into ways that we could avoid the factory pig while still eating the foods we like. Bacon was one of my primary concerns, I mean it is bacon! When we looked at the prices of pasture raised bacon, we knew our budget wouldn't really allow for us to buy a ready made product and quickly set about researching alternatives. We discovered it wasn't really all that difficult to make bacon at home.
When we started making our bacon, we could get pastured raised pork belly for $1.99 a pound. That was long before every farm to table restaurant decided they had to have pork belly on their menu. We have since seen our source price rise to $5.99 a pound and that is still a great deal compared to a lot of prices we've seen out there. That being said it can be difficult to get our hands on high quality product at a price we can afford and we often have to place an order an wait nearly a month before we pick up our belly. The current price paired with our budget has really hampered our ability to really play around with various recipes.
In our bacon recipes, we use a 1:1 salt to sugar ratio as our base. Our sugar source varies from white sugar, maple syrup, brown sugar and honey. Going forward I don't think I'd use honey again. It seems like a waste of good honey as it does not lend its flavor to the final product. We have had success with Maple Syrup when we do a wet brine, but have found that we prefer the flavor of the dry rub recipes.
All of the origin recipes for the bacon we make call for Pinking Salt, but we have never used it in our recipes. We've never run into any problems with our bacon, but many people like the properties and coloring that comes with using the Pinking Salt. We leave it to your personal taste and discretion.
To save on time and clean up, we like to use 2 gallon plastic bags for our curing stage, but alternate storage methods can be utilized.
Apple Cinnamon Bacon is my current fav. I originally got the idea from a Whole Foods offering and my recipe riffs from this one posted on MeatVentures. For today's recipe, I subbed in a jar of Five Spice Apple Butter I pulled from our pantry for the apple flavoring. In the past, we've used Apple Powder, which can be made by dehydrating apple slices and then processing them in a food processor with the chopping blade.
Apple Cinnamon Bacon
5 lb Pork Belly
1/4 Cup Kosher Salt
1/4 Cup Sugar
2 Tablespoons Powdered Cinnamon
1/4 Cup Apple Powder (or in this instance 8 oz jar of Five Spice Apple Butter)
Mix the Kosher Salt, Sugar and powdered Cinnamon in a small bowl
(if using, Apple Powder can be added to this dry rub)
Place Pork Belly into 2 Gallon
Rub salt, sugar, spice mixture into Pork Belly coat all sides well
Massage on Five Spice Apple Butter, if using
Remove as much air as possible from bag
Seal Bag
Place bag in refrigerator (we put our bag in a large container to catch any fluids that might escape)
Cure in refrigerator 5 to 10 days
See Part 2 for Next Steps (still to come)
This Savory Bacon recipe is Rob's favorite. This recipe is based off a delicious this recipe by Mark Ruhlman. We follow it almost to a T, minus the aforementioned pinking salt. I'm pretty sure it was this recipe that got us to start using plastic bags for our curing time.
Savory Bacon
5 lb Pork Belly
1/4 Cup Kosher Salt
1/4 Cup Brown Sugar
4 Tablespoons Coarse cracked Pepper
4 Bay Leaves crumbled
1 teaspoon Freshly ground Nutmeg
5 Cloves smashed Garlic
2 Tablespoons crushed Juniper Berries
10 Sprigs fresh Thyme
Mix Salt, Sugar, and all remaining ingredients in a small bowl
Place Pork Belly into 2 Gallon
Rub salt, sugar, spice mixture into Pork Belly coat all sides well
Remove as much air as possible from bag
Seal Bag
Place bag in refrigerator (we put our bag in a large container to catch any fluids that might escape)
Cure in refrigerator 5 to 10 days
See Part 2 for Next Steps (still to come)
We hope you'll join us next time as we finish our bacon recipe!
In Part 1 of Making Homemade Bacon Two Recipes, we will cover the recipes we use at our house, up to the point where they cure in the fridge for about a week. In Part 2, we'll cover getting the bacon ready for the smoker, smoking, and storage.
We get bonus points for making it easier for us to find recipes, organization is rarely our strong suit and it isn't pretty hunting for the recipes online when all we really want to do is make bacon! We've been making our own bacon for over 6 years now and we've tried many flavors and recipes, but these two are the recipes to which we consistently return. We are sharing my favorite Apple Cinnamon Bacon and Rob's favorite Savory Bacon. Our daughter really wants us to try a Jalapeno Bacon again, but we just haven't been able to give up our favs!
We started making our own bacon after a rather disturbing documentary. DH insisted he would NOT be eating pork from the grocery anymore. He simply couldn't bear the idea that he was participating in a factory system where farmers had to don lab suits and walk through a clean room to care for pigs that would die if exposed to the outside world. We'd already strayed away from grocery store beef in favor of venison, and had adapted our standards for the chicken we eat once we started caring for our own egg layers. This added change just seemed like a natural transition. We started looking into ways that we could avoid the factory pig while still eating the foods we like. Bacon was one of my primary concerns, I mean it is bacon! When we looked at the prices of pasture raised bacon, we knew our budget wouldn't really allow for us to buy a ready made product and quickly set about researching alternatives. We discovered it wasn't really all that difficult to make bacon at home.
When we started making our bacon, we could get pastured raised pork belly for $1.99 a pound. That was long before every farm to table restaurant decided they had to have pork belly on their menu. We have since seen our source price rise to $5.99 a pound and that is still a great deal compared to a lot of prices we've seen out there. That being said it can be difficult to get our hands on high quality product at a price we can afford and we often have to place an order an wait nearly a month before we pick up our belly. The current price paired with our budget has really hampered our ability to really play around with various recipes.
In our bacon recipes, we use a 1:1 salt to sugar ratio as our base. Our sugar source varies from white sugar, maple syrup, brown sugar and honey. Going forward I don't think I'd use honey again. It seems like a waste of good honey as it does not lend its flavor to the final product. We have had success with Maple Syrup when we do a wet brine, but have found that we prefer the flavor of the dry rub recipes.
All of the origin recipes for the bacon we make call for Pinking Salt, but we have never used it in our recipes. We've never run into any problems with our bacon, but many people like the properties and coloring that comes with using the Pinking Salt. We leave it to your personal taste and discretion.
To save on time and clean up, we like to use 2 gallon plastic bags for our curing stage, but alternate storage methods can be utilized.
Apple Cinnamon Bacon is my current fav. I originally got the idea from a Whole Foods offering and my recipe riffs from this one posted on MeatVentures. For today's recipe, I subbed in a jar of Five Spice Apple Butter I pulled from our pantry for the apple flavoring. In the past, we've used Apple Powder, which can be made by dehydrating apple slices and then processing them in a food processor with the chopping blade.
Apple Cinnamon Bacon
5 lb Pork Belly
1/4 Cup Kosher Salt
1/4 Cup Sugar
2 Tablespoons Powdered Cinnamon
1/4 Cup Apple Powder (or in this instance 8 oz jar of Five Spice Apple Butter)
 |
| Apple Cinnamon Bacon Rub using 5 Spice Apple Butter |
Mix the Kosher Salt, Sugar and powdered Cinnamon in a small bowl
(if using, Apple Powder can be added to this dry rub)
Place Pork Belly into 2 Gallon
Rub salt, sugar, spice mixture into Pork Belly coat all sides well
Massage on Five Spice Apple Butter, if using
Remove as much air as possible from bag
Seal Bag
Place bag in refrigerator (we put our bag in a large container to catch any fluids that might escape)
Cure in refrigerator 5 to 10 days
See Part 2 for Next Steps (still to come)
This Savory Bacon recipe is Rob's favorite. This recipe is based off a delicious this recipe by Mark Ruhlman. We follow it almost to a T, minus the aforementioned pinking salt. I'm pretty sure it was this recipe that got us to start using plastic bags for our curing time.
Savory Bacon
5 lb Pork Belly
1/4 Cup Kosher Salt
1/4 Cup Brown Sugar
4 Tablespoons Coarse cracked Pepper
4 Bay Leaves crumbled
1 teaspoon Freshly ground Nutmeg
5 Cloves smashed Garlic
2 Tablespoons crushed Juniper Berries
10 Sprigs fresh Thyme
 |
| Savory Bacon Rub |
Mix Salt, Sugar, and all remaining ingredients in a small bowl
Place Pork Belly into 2 Gallon
Rub salt, sugar, spice mixture into Pork Belly coat all sides well
Remove as much air as possible from bag
Seal Bag
Place bag in refrigerator (we put our bag in a large container to catch any fluids that might escape)
Cure in refrigerator 5 to 10 days
 |
| Pork Belly all rubbed up and ready for the refrigerator |
See Part 2 for Next Steps (still to come)
We hope you'll join us next time as we finish our bacon recipe!
any part 2?????? you forget to do that???? I'd really like to know what to do next!!!!
ReplyDeleteWhere do we find part 2?
ReplyDelete