A few weeks ago I purchased a pork belly, each cut is half a pig worth of belly that is about 1ft wide and 2 1/2 ft long or so.
It came with the skin on, nipples and all, I left the skin on during the brine then trimmed it off prior to the final pepper dry rub. Some people like to use the skin, I disposed of it.
This is the process from start to finish, excluding the trimming that I did. I made a simple brine with water, salt, sugar, molasses, and hard cider that was boiled and then cooled in the frig over-night. The bacon got an initial quick rub with whole peppercorns that were chopped in a coffee grinder (some remain whole, others were chopped into a finer powder). After that I stuffed it into the brine, and weighted it down with a bowl to keep everything below the surface.
After a week I took the belly out of the brine, dried it with paper towels. I trimmed the skin off and lightly trimmed the fat to get rid of excess. Both sides were rubbed again with much more pepper than it received prior to the brine. I wrapped it up again and left the rubbed belly in the refrigerator over-night.
Sliced after the rub and brine.
Placed in a rib rack holder, this works well for saving space but you need to rotate them half-way through the smoke to ensure the under-side gets decent exposure.
Placed the ribs in my smoker (this is an old photo obviously, just for reference).
For this smoke I used aged hickory and cherry logs exclusively without any additional lump charcoal, the logs provide enough moisture when they burn that I don't need a water pan.
This is what the bacon looks like after the first 3 or 4 hours, I rotated one of them so you can see what the underside looks like compared with the top. Clearly the 3 with the red edges have been smoked, while the rotated one looks more like a fried pork chop on its underside. This is the downside to using a pan to catch drippings, you need to rotate the meat for a proper all-around smoke that looks and tastes appealing.
After 6 or 7 hours of smoking at about 200 degrees I removed the bacon to make way for more meat to go in the smoker.
All done and ready to be packaged then refrigerated for slicing.
Sliced the bacon as thin as I can with limited patients and an appetite for bacon. The way I cook bacon is similar to how others here have posted in the past, I place it all in a pyrex container and stuff it in the oven cold. Then I set it to 425 and put a 20 min timer on (some ovens may only need 15 mins). This gives me the perfect crisp without burning the bacon in a pan (if you burn the sugar in the bacon it really detracts from the flavor)
Some of the meat appears to blend in with the fat a bit, it has the same color as the under-side of the half cooked bacon because it was probably a spot that was encapsulated by fat, preventing the meat from taking on a smoked color in my opinion. Perhaps if I smoked another 3 or 4 hours it would have attained a red color, maybe I'll try that next time.
And the final product, tastes fucking awesome and the pepper is in NO way overpowering, if anything I could have probably put twice the quantity of pepper in there and it would have been just fine. Don't be shy with pepper rubs on pork belly.
So thats it. The last things I'd like to add are that I don't add excess nitrates to my brine, the color of the meat comes exclusively from the smoking process. Also a quick note on food safety, it is very important that you cool any brine you make in the refrigerator the day before you intend to put the meat in. A brine needs to be heated so you put all that salt and sugar into solution, then it needs to be cooled down to refrigerator temps. Adding cold meat to a brine that isn't cold can make people extremely sick, so don't do that.
Needless to say this is way better than anything you can buy in a store, its the best bacon I've ever had.
It came with the skin on, nipples and all, I left the skin on during the brine then trimmed it off prior to the final pepper dry rub. Some people like to use the skin, I disposed of it.
This is the process from start to finish, excluding the trimming that I did. I made a simple brine with water, salt, sugar, molasses, and hard cider that was boiled and then cooled in the frig over-night. The bacon got an initial quick rub with whole peppercorns that were chopped in a coffee grinder (some remain whole, others were chopped into a finer powder). After that I stuffed it into the brine, and weighted it down with a bowl to keep everything below the surface.
After a week I took the belly out of the brine, dried it with paper towels. I trimmed the skin off and lightly trimmed the fat to get rid of excess. Both sides were rubbed again with much more pepper than it received prior to the brine. I wrapped it up again and left the rubbed belly in the refrigerator over-night.
Sliced after the rub and brine.
Placed in a rib rack holder, this works well for saving space but you need to rotate them half-way through the smoke to ensure the under-side gets decent exposure.
Placed the ribs in my smoker (this is an old photo obviously, just for reference).
For this smoke I used aged hickory and cherry logs exclusively without any additional lump charcoal, the logs provide enough moisture when they burn that I don't need a water pan.
This is what the bacon looks like after the first 3 or 4 hours, I rotated one of them so you can see what the underside looks like compared with the top. Clearly the 3 with the red edges have been smoked, while the rotated one looks more like a fried pork chop on its underside. This is the downside to using a pan to catch drippings, you need to rotate the meat for a proper all-around smoke that looks and tastes appealing.
After 6 or 7 hours of smoking at about 200 degrees I removed the bacon to make way for more meat to go in the smoker.
All done and ready to be packaged then refrigerated for slicing.
Sliced the bacon as thin as I can with limited patients and an appetite for bacon. The way I cook bacon is similar to how others here have posted in the past, I place it all in a pyrex container and stuff it in the oven cold. Then I set it to 425 and put a 20 min timer on (some ovens may only need 15 mins). This gives me the perfect crisp without burning the bacon in a pan (if you burn the sugar in the bacon it really detracts from the flavor)
Some of the meat appears to blend in with the fat a bit, it has the same color as the under-side of the half cooked bacon because it was probably a spot that was encapsulated by fat, preventing the meat from taking on a smoked color in my opinion. Perhaps if I smoked another 3 or 4 hours it would have attained a red color, maybe I'll try that next time.
And the final product, tastes fucking awesome and the pepper is in NO way overpowering, if anything I could have probably put twice the quantity of pepper in there and it would have been just fine. Don't be shy with pepper rubs on pork belly.
So thats it. The last things I'd like to add are that I don't add excess nitrates to my brine, the color of the meat comes exclusively from the smoking process. Also a quick note on food safety, it is very important that you cool any brine you make in the refrigerator the day before you intend to put the meat in. A brine needs to be heated so you put all that salt and sugar into solution, then it needs to be cooled down to refrigerator temps. Adding cold meat to a brine that isn't cold can make people extremely sick, so don't do that.
Needless to say this is way better than anything you can buy in a store, its the best bacon I've ever had.
Last edited:
