And So It Begins...The Great Bacon Experiment 2010

So, yesterday I picked up a 9.83 pound whole pork belly in CryoVac at the Korean grocery store. I will be carving off a three pound piece to use as fodder for recipes in the Momofuku cookbook. The remainder will be sacrificed to make bacon from scratch at my crib. Check back for pics, progress and what I am doing.

I trimmed it down to on 7 pound piece for the bacon and the 2.8 pounds will be used at a later date. Cure consists of dark brown sugar and kosher salt for round number one. I will rotate in some maple syrup as well to give a good depth of flavor. Pics tomorrow.

I cant wait to taste this on the next trip to DFW…gonna be good.

Very cool… I made the Pork Belly Ssam over New Year’s weekend and it came out great! I look forward to the reports!

Whole Belly in CryoVac:

Close Up Of Belly That Actually Looks Like Bacon:

Seven Pound Portion With Dry Cure:

Close Up Of Cure:

that looks crazy good!

This is going to be a lot of fun to follow, Bill. Looking forward to it.

+1

I started making bacon in december. I cold smoked mine. Are you cold or hot smoking this? Making some Pancetta now.

Since I am dry curing the belly, my plan right now is to cold smoke with a mixture of pecan (from my parents’ trees) and applewood.

No pink salt?

If you plan on cold smoking the use of pink salt is advised to prevent the possibility of botulism growing in the anaerobic environment of a smoker.

I thought Mel was referring to my use of Pink Himalayan or Bolivian Rose salt for my steaks.

Of course, there is a Nitrate/Nitrite curing salt in the mixture.

Hats off to you, Tex!! You’re the Julia Child of bacon.

Who knows, Maybe Bill was making the bacon for a world famous Brxd blogger?

Nice.

looks awesome, Bill. I prefer meatier slices of bacon (c’mon, no matter how “lean” the bacon is, it’s still going to be fatty as hell), and it looks like you found one helluva specimen.

Hey Bill, how do you cook bacon?

Former Faux Hawk is on a roll today!!