Bacon: Part 2

The amount of liquid I poured off the pork belly after the first 24 hours of curing.
An impressive amount at nearly 1 cup, but then it only came in trickles afterward.


I appear to have tagged this photo as "moisture 3" which must mean this is what was left when I cured it the third time on Saturday night. The second time was on Thursday. Tom Mylan never mentions that you should recure the belly throughout the process though searching blogs for help listed different techniques. One of them didn't even bother with a DIY-smoker (only the real thing works?) and all of them only directed 3 hours of smoking rather than the nearly 7 hours Mylan prefers though his range is 4-7 hours.
I got nowhere near my target amount of moisture loss (none of the blogs talked about this) Tom Mylan suggests but I think I would have to recure every single night to reach that. People do say the resulting bacon is salty but also "intense" and "it feels like I just ate a steak dinner." Ha, after only 3 slices.

Anyway, here are the initial weights of the pork belly, their calculated target weight of a loss of 18-25%, and what I eventually got to achieve:

Pork Belly #1
Initial: 456 g
Target: 373.92-342
Final: 412

Pork Belly #2
Initial: 580
Target: 475.6-435
Final: 529

Pork Belly #3
Initial: 512
Target: 419.84-384
Final: 476

Pork Belly #4
Initial: 434
Target: 355.88-325.5
Final: 422

The numbers would probably lead one to believe that I sucked at this, but I can always do it again until it becomes really chilly out. It'd be nice to see how being so precise improves the quality of the finished product.


Putting all the pieces together. Stupid me didn't remember soak the first batch of chips.


Close-up of the wood chips and my electric range. I think I was trying to capture the first whiffs of smoke.
In terms of what wood I smoked, I had a small bag of mesquite I bought from the Brooklyn Kitchen way back in the days I lived in NYC and I bought a big bag of hickory at the TAG's in Porter Square.


Ooh, smokey...


Cured and rinsed pork belly. Looks dramatically different than Bacon: Part 1 I'm sure.


Throwing it in the smoker. Maybe I can go with ten pounds of pork belly next time. Heh, if I can afford it.


For the first two-third's of the process, you smoke the meat side because it'll take the color better than the fat. I'm sure a silly amount of fat would render out as well.
Then you flip them over for the rest of the smoking.


Resulting in this awesomeness! Cool completely before you slice.


The ash and chips.


Mmm, my electric burner smells like bacon.


Fried up the bacon that I goddamn made.



Though I feel it has mellowed out since then, the smoke hit me and my roommate Adam like a hurricane. I have never had bacon quite like this before.
That probably is the case for anything I cook.

Bacon: Part 1

I've never been that big a bacon fan, but since becoming a foodie and a cook I've developed a respect for it. The good stuff; the good, hardwood-smoked stuff or why bother? I've gone through phases of eating bacon with heirloom tomatoes, but 85% of the time I use bacon, it's an ingredient rather than a side dish. I've actually thrown out a fair amount of bacon simply because it's hard to eat it outside of a recipe.
What on Earth could possibly compel me to cure and smoke my own bacon then? Well, isn't respect is nearly as meaningful as addiction (Many addicts probably don't give a damn if the pork belly was smoked over applewood)? I run around dreaming of all the culinary feats I can accomplish (I wonder how long before I attempt a french macaroon), and eventually I think I'll follow through on all of them.
It doesn't hurt that I bought The Better Bacon Book: Make, Cook, and Eat Your Way to Cured Pork Greatness iPad app. Tom Mylan of The Meat Hook in Brooklyn (I think I bought pancetta there once when I needed it and I was shopping at the Brooklyn Kitchen anyway) writes several chapters and many videos about building a DIY-smoker and curing and smoking bacon. There is a totally bad-ass video of him butchering down the side of a pig down to the pork belly that I like to show practically everyone.
The app also has fantastic bacon-centric recipes for Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, Dessert, Cocktails, and Side Dishes from great restaurants across the country (Harvard Square's own Russell House Tavern is featured in the Cocktails section).

Today I finally managed to figure out how to use this electric drill I bought to cut necessary holes into a galvanized steel trash can. I also went and spent $31 on pork belly and prepped it. Next week I expect to smoke it and write a corresponding entry, but here goes Part 1:


Aha! I have finally created a hole big enough for my electric range.
By the way, Tom Mylan made this process look incredibly easy and cheap. While it still may be a lot cheaper than buying prefabricated smoker, I had to buy an electric drill and several larger drill bits to accomplish this.


Tom Mylan's trash can doesn't really look all that different from mine, but I couldn't for the life of me find a grill grate that didn't just fall to the bottom of the trashcan. Its sides are straight and either I had to go with one that was too small or too large. I reasoned I could work with too small.
In any case I spent some time thinking about how I could rig the grate to a certain stabilized heights and my thoughts were running to wood or pipe. So here's the hole I drilled closer to the top of the trashcan. I'll have drilled three more by the time I'm ready to smoke.


The hardware I finally decided to use. I don't know why I only bought two of them. I'll have to buy another pair before the weekend.


Installation.


This is ALMOST all good.


5 1/4 lbs of pork belly. I said I'd skin it myself since I sort of want to make chicharones soon (the Spanish word for utterly great, fresh pork rinds), but I kind of butchered the process a bit and might let them do it next time.
I do need the practice, but I might not always want to bother with making chicharones. Also returning to the concept of practice, I feel pressure to teach myself how to butcher. I don't even cut up whole chickens for recipes, and any respectable chef knows how to butcher... Not that I want to be a chef... Just yet.


Felt like I was wasting the fat cap.


The second half looked worse? Or perhaps just as bad but in a different way?


The pork skin with plenty of fat on it I'm sure. I'll have to remove all of it to prep chicharones. More on this in a future entry.


So one pound each of kosher salt and dark brown sugar seems a bit much for the amount of pork belly I'm using, but I still went with it.


Mixed together by hand. Please don some latex gloves here because you don't want to get this under your fingernails.


Applied to the fat side.


Then applied to the reverse.


Oh gee, I guess there's enough cure left over for another round. Next time I'll stick with a combination of a 1/2 pound of each salt and sugar.


The point of a cure is to draw moisture out of meat in order to preserve it. This photograph are my notes of how much each particular piece of pork belly weighs and the range at which is should weigh before smoking (18-25% less). Tom Mylan says that this could happen within 4 days, but I'm certainly not going to smoke the bacon for 7 hours until at least Saturday.