Bacon Update

I started curing the 6.36 lbs of pork bellies last friday (12/1). The butcher sawed the frozen bellies into two slabs of roughly 3 lbs each. I put each in a gallon-sized reclosable plastic bag and added the cures.

Pork Belly #1: Honey cure, very similar to Emeril's recipe
3 cups salt
1 cup honey
1 cup sugar

Pork Belly #2: Brown sugar cure
3 cups salt
2 cups sugar
1/2 cup molasses
2 bay leaves
1 T ground black pepper

The bags of pork bellies were placed in a 13x9" pan to catch any errant drips and put in the fridge, turned once or twice a day for even marinating. It is now Tuesday, so beginning the 5th day of curing. The brown sugar-cured belly is getting quite hard and lots of juices have been pulled from the meat and mixed with the sugar/salt. It actually looks quite beautiful, especially with the specks of black pepper. In contrast, the meat in the honey cure is much softer when you press on it and a lot less juice has been pulled off -- despite it being a slightly bigger piece. I added a bit more salt to the honey cure bag this morning before work and placed it back in the fridge. Perhaps there just wasn't enough salt to cure it. In hindsight, I should have put the cure ingredients in two pans and heated them to form a solution, then cooled them before pouring over the meat. Instead, I have a gritty heterogenous mess. Apparently clumps of honey do not mix well with sugar or salt when they are cold, FYI.

I bought a smoker over the weekend for $25. It is an electric one and the guy from whom I bought it cured all of his salmon in it. He owned two of the same kind. I trust him -- just look at all of his fishing gear in the picture! Anyway, most of my experience is with the vertical water smokers so I am a little skeptical about the electric kind. But if Alton Brown can make a smoker out of a cardboard box and a fan, how difficult can electric smoking really be. (Side note: when I was searching for the link of his smoker contraption, I found his recipe for making bacon that uses a cure similar to the brown sugar one above.)

When I got the smoker home, I was excited to smoke some meatballs for dinner that night. I plugged it in but it wouldn't work. Instead it just tripped every fuse it came in contact with. I was very sad. I called the guy from whom I bought it to ask if he knew what to do. No answer. Grrrr. Did I get ripped off? It was only $25, but still. The next day he called me back -- turns out he left his phone in the car that night and was very apologetic. He told me that it needs to be plugged in to a high voltage outlet (think washer/dryer) for it to work. Kind of a pain in the ass, but I'll try it. Then he said if it doesn't work for any reason, he'll mail me my money back -- no problem. So that's what I'm going to try next. I wonder if this is why electric smokers aren't more popular... they need all sorts of fancy outlets? Either that, or the fact that vertical water smokers are cheaper and under $50. Plus, it seems most folks who want to smoke food also like tending the fire. Me, I'd rather make more food while I smoke food. Anyway, this is where I am now. I figure I'll start the smoking on Saturday, if I can stand waiting that long. According to most websites, the meat needs to sit out an hour under a fan for a pellicle to form (that's fancy speak for a "skin", like on the top of pudding when it cools). The meat then needs to smoke for 4-6 hours (the internal temperature shouldn't get higher than 80 degrees). Then cool for an hour and slice. Put it in the fridge/freezer, cook and eat.