Makin' Bacon from Scratch

(It Is So Much Better Than Store-bought)

"Life expectancy would grow by leaps and bounds if green vegetables smelled as good as
bacon." Doug Larson

By Meathead Goldwyn

Curing meats such as bacon, ham, or pastrami is fun and the results are often better than store-
bought. But curing is very different from any other recipe. You must read and thoroughly
understand my article on the Science Of Curing Meats before attempting to cure meat. If you do
it wrong you can kill someone you love. But getting it right is not hard.
In case you have been hibernating, I'm here to tell you that bacon has permeated everything from
chocolate to mayonnaise. Unworthy is the upscale bar that doesn't have a cocktail with a bacon
swizzle stick. There's a National Bacon Day and even Burger King has a baconized dessert. But
until you've tasted real honest to goodness old fashioned, sweet, smoky, umami laden, real
American-style bacon, made in your home, you've never really tasted bacon.

Different kinds of bacon

American bacon is what this page is all about: Cured and smoked pork side (1 part meat to 2
parts fat) or belly (1:3). Some commercial American bacons are wet cured by brining or

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injecting, and almost all use sodium nitrite as a preservative and coloring agent. Some are dry
cured with a rub. Most have some sugar or maple flavor in the cure. Some are smoked, and some
get a smoke flavor from liquid smoke. Hickory and apple are the most popular smoking woods.
There are a number of small artisan bacon manufacturers in the US who make wonderful crafted
meats with creative flavor combinations, exotic woods, and astronomic prices.
American bacon must be cooked before use. But save the drippings rendered during cooking.
Bacon fat is wonderfully tasty and makes a superb cooking oil but, like butter, it can burn at high
temps. Try pan sauting broccoli or potatoes in bacon fat over moderate heat to see what I mean.
Candied bacon can be made from American bacon. Click here for three recipes: Brown Sugar
Bacon, Toffee Bacon, and Chocolate Mud Pigs.
Buckboard bacon is pork shoulder, boned, trimmed, cured, and smoked. It is much leaner than
side bacon or belly. The meat to fat ration is about 3:1 or more. Because there is much less fat
than American bacon (belly) it does not need more time in the cure unless it is really thick.
Canadian bacon is made from loin meat and is often called back bacon. It is much leaner,
perhaps 10:1 meat to fat, and, because it is thicker, the curing time will be about two weeks
instead of one week. In the US, it is called back bacon. Order boneless loin (not tenderloin) if
you want to make this. In Canada you can also find pea-meal bacon which has been rolled in
cornmeal. Just follow the Simple Bacon recipe on the left side of the page.
Pork cheeks, hams, and other parts of the animal. Pretty much any part of the hog and be cured
and smoked. That's pretty much the story of most American wet-cured hams. Cheeks are
especially good for making bacon. They are thin and not as fatty, so they normally need only a
three to four days in the cure.
Bacon from other animals. According to USDA, bacon is made from swine only. But creative
chefs have been known to use the bacon process on duck breast, turkey breast, boneless leg of
lamb, beef, goat, whatever. The time in the cure is determined by the thickness of the meat and
especially the amount of fat. Duck breast can be fully cured in as little as two days. Turkey
breast, three days. Beef tongue, a week.
Bacon bits that you buy in the store are usually made from soy beans, not pork.
Lardons are little cubes of bacon, great for flavoring other dishes like soups, beans, salads, stir
fries, eggs, etc.

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 Making lardons
Chef Rick Gresh inspired my method for lardons. Cut the bacon into 1/4" cubes and heat them in
a pan until they are almost done. Then pour in an Asian BBQ sauce, perhaps a teriyaki sauce or a
yakitori sauce and simmer a few minutes. Heck, you can even use a Kansas City style barbecue
sauce and make bacon burnt ends.

Cooking bacon
I really don't have to tell you how to cook bacon, but here are some ideas that you might want to
try. Keep in mind, my recipe is cooked on the smoker so it will not get hard when cooked like
commercial bacon.
Roasting or baking. Most of us just lay the bacon in a frying pan. That works fine, but tends to
overcook it easily. Try roasting it. Line a baking sheet or sheet pan with foil. Lay rashers (slices)
of bacon on the foil so they are not touching or overlapping. Better still, put them on a rack in the
pan. Place the pan in a 400F oven. Check in about 15 minutes. Take it out when it is just a little
less cooked than you like it because it will continue to cook after you remove it from the oven.
Smoking. Amp up the smokiness of the bacon. On a grill: Set up a 2-zone grill. One side hot,
the other side not. Put the bacon in a foil lined pan on the indirect side or on a rack in the pan on
the indirect side. Throw some wood chips on the hot side to amp up the smoke. On a smoker: It
can take forever to cook them at the usual 225F, so you need to get your smoker hot. If it has a
water pan, yank it out of there.

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Microwave. You can also cook bacon in the microwave. Lay down some newspaper, cover it
with paper towels, and jolt it for about two minutes to start. Your microwave may need longer.
Boiling. If you put the bacon in a pan with about 1/4" water on hiogh, the water will begin
melting the fat and when it evaporates more fat will render and both the fat and meat will be
especially crispy. Try this with about 1/2" water and thick sliced potatoes. When the water
evaporates the taters will fry in the bacon fat while the bacon crisps!
After you have made the bacon, click here to see my recipes for candied bacon.

Save the bacon drippings

While your bacon is cooking lay out a section of newspaper several sheets thick, and cover it
with a layer of paper towels. As soon as you take the bacon out of the oven, move it to the paper
towel to drain.
Let the fat in the pan cool a bit and then pour it in a glass jar and refrigerate. Hot bacon can melt
a plastic tub, so be careful. Save the fat for up to a month and use it to fry. Broccoli and potatoes
are especially good cooked in bacon grease.

Watch Jason King make this recipe

Our friend Jason King makes our recipes and fun videos of the process. Here he is makin'
bacon.
In parallel to bacon's rise, pork belly, from which bacon is made, has moved from Asian menus
to mainstream menus across the nation. The major difference between the two is that bacon is
cured with a lot of salt, slightly sweet, and smoked, while belly is often just rubbed or marinated,
and roasted without the smoke. But when it comes to both, there's room for a lot of creativity,
and the lines are blurring.
Although there are more and more artisinal bacon producers making killer (expensive) bacon out
there, almost all the stuff in the grocery stores is made by huge manufacturers taking shortcuts
designed to get the stuff onto the market as fast and cheaply as possible. That's because, sadly,
most shoppers see bacon as a commodity. As consumers, we reinforce this behavior when we
shop by price alone. Even the labels with boutiquey names (like Farmer John) are usually made
by the big mass producers (Hormel).
The product is delicious, but there is no substitute for the flavors of slowly smoked bacon made
the old fashioned way.
Makin' bacon at home is surprisingly easy and the results are quantum leaps better than the stuff
from large commercial producers. Once you have the basic recipe down, you can vary the
ingredients to make a flavor profile to suit your taste. It is a simple two-step process: (1) Curing,
and (2) smoking.

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Ordering the meat
Commodity American bacon is usually from the belly and chest where the ratio of meat to fat
can be 1:3. My favorite bacon is made from the layers of fat and meat that lie on top of the spare
ribs, called "side bacon" or "streaky bacon". It can be about 1:1 or 1:2, with more meat,
depending on the breed of hog, age of the hog, feed, and other variables. When shopping, ask
your butcher to order some fresh, unfrozen, raw side or belly bacon slab, unsliced. It should look
like the picture here.

Make sure you explain that you want raw bacon, not cured, and not slice. Ask your butcher to
remove the skin, but save it for you so you can make cracklins. You can freeze the skin until you
are ready to make the cracklins.
These recipes are designed for a slab of meat and there is too much surface area on sliced belly
for them to be used. If you got sliced by mistake, marinate it in your favorite marinade or cook it
straight or adapt this recipe for pork belly. An Asian marinade like teriyaki/huli huli is great.
As soon as you get it home, start the cure because raw pork fat does not age gracefully. It gets
rancid and smells funky in only 5 to 6 days. That's a flavor beloved in many European and Asian
countries, but not so much in the US. Once it is cured and smoked, it will keep in the fridge for a
couple of weeks, and it freezes well for up to two months.

About my smoking method

According to Chef Stephen Gerike of the National Pork Board, commodity bacon uses Prague
Powder #2which has a blend of salt, sodium nitrite, and sodium nitrate for better, longer,
preserving properties. It is often injected with the cure and sprayed with liquid smoke. "The
cured belly goes into the smoker at 100F for 30 minutes, then the temperature is reduced, after
drying, to between 80 and 90F. That low, or cold, temperature is maintained for about six
hours." The result is a raw cured meat that must be cooked before eating, and cooking it long
enough can produce really crispy, bacon.

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But my old fashioned recipe calls for Prague Powder #1 and smoking at 225F. That cooks and
pasteurizes the meat and makes it safe to eat right off the smoker. I do not recommend cold
smoking at home.
Yes, I know your Ukranian neighbor cold smokes his bacon the way his Papa taught him, but he
is playing Russian roulette, especially with today's meat supply. Click here for more on cold
smoking.
After smoking you can store my bacon in the fridge for about two weeks or freeze it for months.
Then cook it the normal way. But take note: It will not get as hard and crispy as commercial cold
smoked bacon. Of course, if you are like me, you don't want your bacon crumbly, so this is not a
problem.
I like it better cooked on a charcoal smoker than others. A gas smoker or pellet smoker is a close
second to charcoal. You can do this on a gas grill orcharcoal grill if you set them up properly
for smoking (follow the links). Use plenty of wood.

Variations on the theme

Here are three bacon recipes. Remember that the salt, Prague powder #1, liquid and meat ratios
are the crucial and you need to keep their quantity in proportion to get a good safe cure. After
that, the rest of the ingredients are merely flavorings, and you can change them to your taste.
A word of caution: Most people love these recipes as you can see from the comments on the
bottom of the page. But saltiness is very much a matter of personal preference. A few people find
the bacon too salty, and a few find it not salty enough. For this reason I strongly recommend you
make a small 1 pound batch the first time to see how you like it. If it is too salty for your taste,
after curing it with my recipe, soak it overnight in water in a non-reactive container in the fridge.
This will pull out some salt. But don't cut back on the salt in the curing process. If it is not salty
enough, you can add more during the cure.
Takes. 2 hours prep, seven days of curing, 2 hours of smoking.
Makes. About 25 thick slices

1) Simple bacon
Ingredients
1 pound of unsliced pork belly
1 1/2 teaspoons Morton's kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon Prague powder #1
1 1/2 teaspoons ground black pepper
2 tablespoons dark brown sugar
1/4 cup distilled water

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2) Maple Bacon (my favorite)
Ingredients
1 pound of unsliced pork belly
1 1/2 teaspoons Morton's kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon Prague powder #1
1 1/2 teaspoons ground black pepper
1 tablespoon dark brown sugar
3 tablespoons Grade B maple syrup
1/4 cup distilled water

3) Asian Bacon
Ingredients
1 pound of unsliced pork belly
1 1/2 teaspoons Morton's kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon Prague powder #1
2 tablespoons hoisin sauce
2 tablespoons honey
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon powdered ginger
1 teaspoon powdered garlic
1 teaspoon Sriracha or other hot sauce
1/4 teaspoon 5 spice powder
2 tablespoons water

About the maple syrup. The syrup is the water that carries the dissolved salts, as well as its own
sugars. I use real maple syrup in this recipe, but it is expensive. If you wish you can use Steens
Cane Sugar, imitation maple syrup, sorghum, honey, Lyle's Golden Syrup, or molasses.
Optional. For your next batch you can adjust the quantities of black pepper, and if you wish you
can add fresh garlic or dried garlic, citrus zest, herbs such as thyme, bay leaf powder, celery
seed, chile pepper, fennel, or coriander.
Method
1) If the skin is still on, remove it and use it to make cracklins. It is sometimes hard to tell if it is
still there. You should be able to make a cut in fat with your thumbnail. Your thumbnail will only
make a dent in skin. Leaving it on cause problems for salt penetration, and when you fry it, the
skin gets very hard and you probably won't like the texture. Removing the skin can be tricky.
Sometimes you can grip a corner and with a knife and peel it back by running the knife between
the skin and fat. Sometimes you just have to shave it off with a sharp knife.

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2) Pour everything except the meat into a zipper bag large enough to hold the belly. A 1 gallon
bag will hold a single 3 pound slab but you will need to triple the recipe. Zip the bag and squish
everything around until well mixed. Now add the belly, squeeze out the air as much as possible
and squish some more, aggressively rubbing the cure into the belly and vigorously coating all
sides. Put the bag in a pan to catch leaks and place in the fridge at 34 to 38F for at least 7 days.
If the belly is thicker than 1 1/2" add another couple of days. More time won't hurt it. The belly
will release liquid so every day or two you want to gently massage the bag so the liquid and
spices are well distributed, and flip the bag over. NOTE: If you use more than one slab in a bag
it is crucial that the slabs do not overlap each other. Thickness matters!
3) Remove the belly from the bag, and throw the liquid away. Rinse it to wash off any thick
deposits of salt on the surface. Most recipes tell you to let the slab dry for 24 hours so the smoke
will stick better, but, as the AmazingRibs.com science advisor Dr. Greg Blonder has proven,
smoke sticks better to wet surfaces, this extra step isn't necessary.
4) If you are using a grill, set up for 2-zone cooking or fire up your smoker. Smoke over indirect
heat at 225F until the internal temp is 165F, about 2 hours. You can use any wood you like.
Hickory is the tried and true. I'm partial to cherry and apple-wood. You should slice off the ends,
which may be very dark and more heavily seasoned, and taste them right away. They will be
more salty than the innards and the fat will be a bit stringy, but you'll love it all the same. Just
wait til you cook up a center slice!
5) Now let it cool on a plate in the fridge. Cold bacon is easier to slice. Use on a slicer if you
have one, or use a long thin knife to slice it. Try some thin and some thick slices. You can also
cut bacon in cubes to make lardons (see the sidebar), and use them like bacon bits in salads,
mashed potatoes, mac and cheese, baked beans, in sauces or to garnish chops, or roasts.
6) Wrap it tightly with several layers of plastic wrap, and then a layer of foil, and refrigerate for
up to 2 weeks or freeze for up to 3 months. Do not wrap in foil alone because it can react with
the salt. When you are hungry, cook it just like you do store-bought bacon.

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