Home Made Bacon

[blugill]

Last night was the culmination of seven days of curing a full slab of pork belly!

I started with a big, I mean big like around two foot by three foot, frozen pork belly. thawed it in the fridge overnight.

The next day I mixed up a batch of curing rub from kosher salt, brown sugar, and maple syrup. I cut the slab into two pieces and then applied the rub. Top, bottom, sides, just all over it.

Then each slab went into a two gallon ziploc bag. Then into the fridge for a week! Flipping each slab over once a day so that the brine that forms will coat the entire slab.

After seven days the meat is cured, you can cut it and fry it if you want but I smoked it instead! About an hour and a half in the BGE with hickory chips. I wanted to use maple chips instead but couldn't find any in town

This bacon is very rich. It would make for excellent BLT sandwiches instead of breakfast bacon. It's meaty and sweet. Very cool flavor and much different than store bought bacon.