This recipe will show you how to make homemade, smoked and cured bacon. Once you make it for yourself, you will not buy it from the store again. Until very recently I was one of the few people in the world who did not care for bacon. My family loves it though. One day I stumbled across a recipe for making a home meat cure. I thought I would try it on a slab of pork belly I needed to use. After going through the process for curing the pork belly slab and smoking I naturally had to sample it. I sliced off a thick slice and fried it up. Wow! I now like bacon.
The thing I love about making it at home is I control the thickness of the slices and the shape of the meat. I really love thick slabs of bacon and chunks. The chunks I either fry them or roast them so the fat cap renders and the caramelizes and almost become bacon candy. You can also sprinkle a little sugar on the bacon chunk, fry it and you will have bacon candy.
The recipe below includes a sub-recipe for making a cure. You can use this cure for any meat you would like to cure, just remember the 3% rule (use 3% of cure of the total weight of the meat).
You can see the tools and resources I use to smoke meat and around the kitchen in the following link.
The following YouTube video (from CHUD’s BBQ) uses a similar process to make bacon and use it on a Homemade BLT (link). It is well worth watching.
If you buy anything from the links contained within this page, I may receive a commission.
Homemade Cured and Smoked Bacon
Equipment
- Vacuum Sealer (optional) it will tremendously help with the curing process
- Meat Slicer (optional) helps to make uniformly sliced strips of bacon
- Large Bowl
- Airtight container to hold extra cure A large used spice container works well
Ingredients
The Cure
- 3 percent by weight Cure Rub 3% of the total weight of the meat (1 pound of meat is 453.59 grams). If the meat is one pound you will need 13.6 grams of cure. This is important to calculate the correct amount of cure
The Meat
- Pork Belly Slab Any size will do. I like 2½ pound increments.1
Instructions
Make the Cure
- If not already completed, mix all the cure ingredients together and store in an airtight container. You will have extra if you follow my recipe.
Cure The Meat
- Measure 3% of the total weight of the meat (1 pound of meat is 453.59 grams) of cure. If the meat is one pound you will need 13.6 grams of cure. This is important to calculate the correct amount of cure
- Apply the set aside cure to the pork belly. Rub it on all sides of the pork belly. It is important to apply all the set aside cure to the meat, or the meat will not fully cure
- Vacuum seal the cured meat. You can also tightly wrap the meat with Saran Wrap
- Place the meat in the refrigerator for 7 days. Flip the meat 1-2 times daily
- After 7 days, pull the meat from the refrigerator and rinse off any remaining cure with cold water. The meat should have turned a redder color.
- Sample the pre-smoked meat by slicing off a small portion of the cured meat and fry it until done. If it is too salty, soak the meat in some water to leech out some of the salt.
- Pat the meat dry and return it to the refrigerator for one more overnight period
Smoke the meat
- Preheat your smoker to 200°F using your favorite heat/smoke fuel.
- Rub the meat with any flavor enhancers you might like. For example, red chili pepper flakes, maple syrup, brown sugar, maple syrup, black pepper, etc.
- Smoke the meat until it reaches an internal temperature of 150°F
- Pull the meat and let it rest overnight in the refrigerator wrapped in Saran Wrap
Serve the bacon
- Slice the meat using a meat slicer or a good slicing knife. You can also make chunks of bacon too. The chunks are my favorite.