I’m more or less done buying store bacon now. At least, most of the time. Bacon is something I can’t entirely be a snob about, as I love it in nearly every form. Crunchy dry microwave bacon (great on quick sandwiches), quick grocery store pack tossed in the oven (great for breakfast-for-dinner or on bigger sandwiches, or just by itself), bacon bits (the real ones, great on salads and potatoes), and thick, meaty homemade bacon – it’s all fantastic. But I’m going to try to keep a constant supply of homemade bacon in the freezer at all times now.

The only problem? It took two weeks to make this.

That’s not really even a problem, it just means I have to be more careful about how I plan things.

This is the journey of my first homemade bacon experiment, and the entrance to the rabbit hole that led to me getting my own smoker.

First, the recipe I followed

My wife got a massive 8.2lb pork belly on sale from Costco and I immediately began planning. First, the pork belly went into the freezer, as we got it at the end of February and I wouldn’t be smoking it until mid-April. I decided to take it to my parents’ house and smoke it with my dad on his birthday (since he has the smoker, too).

I started by loosely following this recipe from Hey Grill, Hey. Since it was my first time curing any sort of meat, I didn’t want to stray and risk botulism or something. I had to scale it by 1.5x because of the massive size of the meat that I had.

• The curing process took around 13-14 days, so I needed to pull the pork belly out of the freezer about 2 days prior to starting the cure, so that it could thaw in the fridge.
• I then cut the length of the pork belly into two smaller sizes so that I had a chance of fitting them in my vacuum sealer bags. I didn’t want to do this, but it wound up being the right call for cooking, too.
• After it was thawed, I needed to mix my cure:
  • 1 ¼ tsp Prague Powder #1 (curing salts)
    • I hunted forever to find this and could not find it in any of my big chain grocery stores, so I wound up grabbing this 16 ounce jar from Amazon [affiliate link] which is not ideal, but I was on a sensitive timeline.
  • 5 tbsp coarse kosher salt
  • 5 tbsp brown sugar
    • We mix our own from molasses + sugar. I hate doing the mixing, but my wife doesn’t mind.
  • 3 tbsp + 1 tsp maple syrup
  • 3 tbsp + 1 tsp cracked black pepper
    • Yes, that’s a lot. Yes, you want it all.
  • 1 ½ tsp red pepper flakes
  • Depending on your intended use for the bacon, you could integrate other seasonings and flavors, but I kept it as-is for this first run.
• Now, put the pork belly into bags that you can get close to air-tight. I’m vacuum sealing mine, so I just cut appropriately-sized bags from my roll for each piece, carefully shoved the meat in there.
• Rub your curing mixture on all sides of the meat. Try to get it as evenly dispersed as possible.
  • This was… difficult. The maple syrup really made the whole thing gummy, and it did not want to rub on evenly. Especially dividing the whole thing among two chunks of meat, this was not an easy or confidence-inducing task. I stressed out about it quite a bit, as I was worried that uneven distribution would lead to the meat spoiling – but while I couldn’t find clear answers on this specifically, I did see plenty of photos of everyone else’s pork belly in the cure looking just about as uneven as mine. So I proceeded anyway, knowing I may throw it out if it looked bad.
• Vacuum seal (or squeeze out all the air if just using zipper bags) the bags and brine in the fridge for 7 to 14 days.
  • Brining for longer introduces stronger flavors. I wound up brining for about 12 days.
• Every day, massage and flip the bags of meat. This helps the cure to penetrate the meat and keep getting evenly-distributed.
• After the 7 to 14 days is up, unseal the meat and rinse all of that cure off. It will have imparted flavor onto the meat, but you don’t really want to eat it. Just rinse it off, pat dry with paper towels.
• Slice thin (just barely through the fat) cross-cuts across the fat side of the pork belly and season with more cracked black pepper.
  • This cross-cutting helps with seasoning penetration and more even cooking.
• Leave on a wire rack uncovered in your fridge for 12-14 hours.
• Smoke at around 160-170F until the meat reaches 155F. (~6 hours-ish?)
• Then freeze the meat, slice, and either freeze or fry!

The Cure

No, not the band. (But also yes?)

The cure serves two roles here.

First is to dry brine the meat. All of that seasoning and sweetness seeps into the moisture that’s in the meat and leaves wonderful flavoring behind – that’s a big part of why bacon is so delicious and addicting. And ooh boy, this bacon was the most flavorful and delicious bacon I’ve ever eaten.

The second role is to cure and preserve the meat. The Prague Powder #1 (curing salts) used here are for short-term brines (days to a couple weeks) whereas Prague Powder #2 is for longer-term brines (months to years). The #1 salt is made up of mostly table salt, but about 6% sodium nitrite. This is what halts bacterial growth in the meat to keep it from spoiling, while also enhancing the flavor. Since it takes a lonely was not that complicated. Just scale your mix for the amount of meat that you have and try to apply evenly.

Rinse the remnants of the cure off the meat when you pull it out, as it will be a gunky and sticky mess which you don’t really want to taste directly (and might make cooking difficult).

The Smoker

This was my first time really using the smoker. My dad had a box-style smoker before that ran off propane, and recently upgraded to a Pit Boss pellet grill. I’ve used it over there for additional grill space for a while, but my dad has usually always handled the smoking.

Ultimately, the process on this one was pretty straightforward. Set the cook temperature, pop in the probes to monitor temps, and wait. The Pit Boss automatically feeds wood pellets to maintain temperatures, so it’s a fairly uninvolved process. We split the time about 50/50 on the grates vs in a foil pan to soak in some juices, though I’m not sure how necessary that was.

We ended up cooking at a higher temp, as my dad had already started a (delicious) brisket earlier that morning, so it did not take anywhere near as long to get to temp as I had expected. (We also wound up basting the brisket in the bacon juices, which was incredible, by the way.)

Slice and Cook

After reaching 155-160F, we pulled the foil pan with the pork belly off the smoker and let it rest for a few minutes. I then popped half of the meat in the freezer for 5-10 minutes while we prepped other things.

After a brief rest in the freezer, I sliced that half of the meat using a large knife. This was super easy, and I was also left with some big chunks of fat that I saved for later.

The first cut went well. I struggled to cut it thin – but I enjoy a thick slice of bacon, so that wasn’t a problem.

I threw it in a giant cast iron skillet on the grill and cooked it low and slow – with the fat chunks added in to render and get the grease flavor really baked in there. One batch at a time, the most incredible bacon I’ve ever had was made.

The second half of the meat was left in the freezer while we ate, probably for an hour or two, and was… much more miserable to cut. I got a couple small blisters from the process. Definitely only freeze for a short while before slicing.

I then bagged up everything we weren’t eating and vacuum sealed 5-7 slices per pack to keep using later.

I’ve cooked the bacon a few different ways now, and “low and slow” in the cast iron is still the best. Unless you’ve got a meat slicer (or perfect precision) your slices aren’t going to come out completely even. Combine this with the thickness of the slices, and I found it very difficult to get them to fully cook (while being even) and not burn in the oven. Low and slow, take your time, let the fat render and the juices soak in and you’re in for a treat.

Meals

This bacon is good for anything:

• By itself
• With breakfast foods (eggs, sausage, biscuits, french toast)
• On sandwiches (we even did brisket and bacon together on sandwiches on my dad’s birthday when I originally made this)
• Chopped for potato skins/twice baked potatoes
• Carbonara (made the best carbonara I’ve ever had with this stuff)

The flavor is so strong that you might want to dial back whatever you’re including it with, but it’s perfect otherwise.

Rationing

Since I started with an enormous 8.2lb pork belly, I was left with a ridiculous amount of bacon. As mentioned, I vacuum sealed 5-8 slices at a time into individual bags, that we can freeze and then just thaw and cook for whatever meal we want to use it with. Admittedly (since it’s so damn good) this has only lasted us a few months but if you eat bacon less frequently than I do it should last a good, long while. And I can keep making it, freezing it, and having it ready for the future. By having smaller portions ready, I don’t have to worry about what to do with the second half of the pack – as I usually do with store bought bacon. The smaller, pre-packaged portions lead to less bacon eating because I’m not just coming up with reasons to use up bacon in the fridge before it goes bad.