Bacon, bacon, bacon... BACON!

While Ken was at Santacon, I spent Saturday smoking bacon! The smoker worked, thanks to an appliance extension cord (15') that connected the washing machine hookup in the basement to the smoker outside. I used my favorite cast iron skillet to hold the wet hickory chips. Brought out the fire extinquisher -- just in case -- and then I plugged it in.

Super hot, super fast.

But it worked. I added a water pan to cool the internal temperature of the smoker and used my external read thermometer to monitor the internal temperature of the bacon. Since bacon isn't supposed to get too hot (I read 85 degrees online), else the bacon fat with liquify, I was careful to check the temperature often. My first time checking it (30 minutes after plugging it in), the bacon internal temperature was 115 degrees. Ooops.

I unplugged it and put the pork bellies in the freezer for 20 min to cool them down. Then back in the plugged-in smoker for 20 min, followed by 20 min in the UN-plugged smoker (still smoke though). Then freezer, repeat ad nauseum. It was a long day but I passed the time transplanting the grapevine in the backyard and finishing some stained glass pieces.

After 7 hours of painful rotations, it was done. Or at least I was calling it done. I put the bacon slabs in the fridge and went to meet Ken and 7 other santas at a bar down the street. (Note: a red room + black light makes a room full of santas look SUPER creepy).

When we came home at midnight, Ken was supportive of me wanting to slice bacon. I pulled Rachel's blind grandmother's deli slicer from the basement and went to work.



Close-up of starting to slice the bacon. You can see the cured, smoked, unsliced bacon in the bottom right of the picture:


Happy that bacon is almost finished:


And the finished sliced bacon!


Another reason why I love Ken is because he was game enough to heat up, not one, but two frying pans to cook both types at 12:30 am while I continued to slice. Although, I'd probably want to eat bacon, too, if I were drinking for 12 hours. The molasses cure turned out amazing. Ken called it the best bacon he ever had in his life. The other one (the honey cure) was inedible due to salt. Seriously, it was terrible. I remember reading in Salt that people who used salt as a preservative would usually briefly soak their food in water to remove the salt. I tried soaking it this morning for 30 min and it totally worked. It tasted like normal bacon, nothing special, but at least it was edible bacon. I'm currently post-curing it in maple syrup to see if that might bring out some flavor and will likely give it a 30 min smoke tomorrow night to dry it out. Pretty exciting that such different flavors can come from such subtle variations in sugar and salt.

Short version: making bacon is a pain in the ass but not that hard and I'd totally do it again.