How to cure and smoke bacon
How To Cure Your Own Bacon! The world's best bacon rub recipe and curing / smoking instructions, we've made this for years and can't get enough of it!
Ingredients
- 2 1/2 lbs slab of pork belly
- 2 1/2 tbsp sea salt, or pink Himalayan salt
- 1 1/2 tbsp organic cane sugar
- 1 tbsp black peppercorns
- 1 tsp fennel seed
- 1 tsp caraway seed
- 1 tsp dried rosemary
- 1 tsp dried thyme
- 2 bay leaves
- 1 garlic clove finely chopped
Instructions
Curing
- Weigh out the pork belly slabs so you can figure out how much of the other ingredients you need.
- Measure out the correct amount of salt, sugar, and spices (everything besides the pork) out into a bowl.
- Cut the pork belly slabs into pieces that you can fit into the biggest tupperwares you have.
- Start rubbing in the salt mixture all over every surface of each pork slab. You want to get it really well coated. As you rub it into each one you can place that one into a tupperware. If you have some salt mixture leftover at the end, just divide it between all the containers and dump it on top of the pork slabs.
- Put the lids tightly on all the containers and place them in the refrigerator. Each day you flip the tupperwares over. They stay in the fridge for 7 days, being turned over once a day.
Smoking
- Take all the bacon out of the tupperwares and rinse them all off. You don’t have to be too thorough. Leaving some of the seasonings on will be fine, and will make the smoking process even better.
- Let the bacon slabs sit out and dry for 30 minutes or so, so they aren’t soaked when going in the smoker.
- Get your smoker all ready and the temperature up to 200 to 225 F. We especially love to use hickory wood / pellets in the smoker, it gives it the most wonderful flavor!
- Leave the bacon in the smoker until the internal temperature comes up to 165 F.
- Take all the bacon out of the smoker and let it cool. Now it’s time to slice it up! Our family especially loves thickly sliced bacon.
- Weigh out the bacon into 1lb packages. Get them all packaged and then stick em in the freezer.