Bacon

Who doesn't love bacon? In our house we love bacon (besides one). We practically eat it once a week. So I figured why not give it a try and make it myself. Another reason was to cut out any nitrites. You know, the pink salt that gives us cancer. That is a debate all in its self.

Now one would think that living in the Midwest you would be able to get pork belly for cheap, not so in Wichita. Either I got we don't sell enough to stock or it was $5 lb. So now I had to switch to plan B, make buckboard bacon. This bacon is  similar in method but you use a pork shoulder/butt instead of the fatter pork belly. So on with the experiment.

This picture shows the meat after I pulled it out of the brine.

Next was to add a small amount of cold smoke to the meat. Another new skill I tried/learned. I went the cheap route and used a soldering iron, aluminum can and some pellets.

After a few hours I ended up with this.

Then it was time to cook.

Overall it came out okay. I would like to try pork belly next. The pork shoulder is a very lean cut of meat compared to the belly. That my be why it was not a 100% to my liking. The up side is there was no nitrites added to this dish.