Makin' Bacon

Before I left for Ireland, I did partake in a cool little cooking experiment. My mother-in-law, knowing my addiction to cooking, smoking and creating our own food instead of having to buy everything, bought me a cool book, called Jar It, Pickle It, Cure It. The book has all sorts of easy recipes on making things from scratch, which is right up my alley. Some of them are naturally things I won't really care for all that much (a lot of the pickled items, for instance, but one that jumped right out at me was making bacon from scratch.

I'm not a big bacon eater, since it's not good for the heart health, but as long as it's eaten in small amounts and in moderation (like, once every three months) then I don't think it's going to put me over the edge of unhealthiness. And when the wife and I discovered the glory of the H Mart (an all-Asian/Hispanic grocery store) that had raw pork belly, I knew I had to give it a shot.

You basically start with raw pork belly:


You make a mixture of curing salts, molasses, pepper and sugar, and rub that all over the belly like a paste. Throw it all in a ziplock bag and refrigerate it. Every day, you flip it over and massage the belly a little, helping the paste suck the moisture out and getting the molasses and pepper and sugar in. After seven-10 days of doing this, you fire up the smoker and smoke that stuff super-low for about 5 hours.


When that is finished, you cool it off, let it get a little firm, and then slice it however you see fit. Then cook that fine bacon.


The interesting part is tasting real homemade bacon for the first time. It's sweeter, smokier and lot richer in flavor. And at first I thought I had screwed it up until I realized that this is what real bacon actually SHOULD taste like, instead of something that's been processed half-a-dozen times somewhere in Nebraska and then shipped to my grocery store in plastic airtight packages. This was as fresh as it was going to get, and once I told myself to get past the store-bought perceptions fo what bacon should taste like, I found it delicious. Damn delicious. Had to stop myself from cooking up the second piece of belly delicious. I had two big portions left, so I have to use them soon since they only keeper for about six months. Knowing some of my friends, this shouldn't be a problem. As an added bonus, this has allowed the wife and I to laugh about one of our favorite scenes in Muppets history, when Kermit loses his memory.