How to Make Bacon: Dry Cured and Cold Smoked (Episode 23)

Mass produced bacon has nothing on our cure and technique for making bacon. We use a dry cure and cold smoked process, which ensures maximum smokiness in the meat and superior flavor and texture.

Also included in this video: BG's thoughts on nitrite-free bacon, how to avoid botulism, and what's wrong with assuming health food stores only sell healthy food.

Warning: Making cold-smoked bacon requires careful attention to ingredients and the smoking process. This warning should not be discounted. Follow guidelines from the USDA:

United States Department of Agriculture, Food Safety and Inspection Service Meat Curing and Smoking Recommendations
fsis.usda.gov/wps/portal/footer/!ut/p/a1/zZLJas…

National Center for Home Food Preservation Guide and Literature Review Series: Smoking and Curing
nchfp.uga.edu/publications/nchfp/lit_rev/cure_s…

Equipment for Making Bacon
Pork fresh side (a.k.a. pork belly)
A smoker that allows you to cold smoke
A meat slicer (recommended, but not necessary)
Mixing bowl and spoon
Medium and large aluminum pans
Pink salt (a.k.a. Prague Powder #1, not Himalayan salt)
Kosher salt
Organic dark brown sugar
Jellyroll pan and rack
Plastic wrap
Rubber gloves
A few chunks of apple wood
A vacuum sealer and Vac Master bags

Recipe for Bacon Cure Mixture (2.25% salt by weight)
(For 10 pounds)
14.51 grams of pink salt (a.k.a. Prague Powder # 1)
102.06 grams of Morton’s kosher salt
51.03 grams of organic dark brown sugar

Main Steps for Making Bacon
1. Prepare the cure mixture.
2. Use the digital scale to measure 16.76 grams of cure mixture for each one pound of meat.
3. Prepare a vacuum sealed bag.
4. Add the meat and cure mixture to the bag, close one end with your hand, and shake the meat and mixture to evenly coat the meat.
5. Seal the bag with a vacuum sealer.
6. Allow the cured meat to rest in the bags for 7 days for each inch of depth in the meat. Check the meat midweek to make sure there are no lumps of cure.
7. Remove the cured meat from the bags, pat the meat dry with paper towels, and allow the meat to dry overnight on wire racks in a jellyroll pan.
8. Smoke the meat in an electric smoker at 70-80 degrees for six rounds of 1 hour per round.
9. Par-freeze (slightly freeze) the slabs of bacon so they are easier to slice.
10. Slice the slab of bacon, weigh the meat and separate into stacks for packing.
11. Seal the into vacuum sealed bags.

Our Final Freezer keeps it about the food. We'll show you how to make simple, delicious, healthy (and often dairy-free and gluten-free) food -- always with a twist of humor.
We don't give you recipes. We show you how.