Homemade bacon is easy, but it requires space and time. The basic idea is to bury the belly in a combination of salt, sugar, and spices, and to leave it that way for four days or up to a week. After that, you rinse, let it dry out, and throw it in the smoker for as long as you want. This is the recipe that on the Judges' Award at the Brooklyn Bacon Takedown in Williamsburg.

For food safety reasons, its probably best to throw in a tablespoon of pink salt in the cure, which you can order here. This will make the final product appear more pink than grayish (think of that commercial bacon look) and also help to eliminate chances of mold or nasty organisms growing should your cure not completely submerge the meat (bacteria be introduced in some other way).

 

Here are the steps:

Create your signature cure using the ratios in the recipe below, which were adapted from Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn's seminal ouvrage, Charcuterie. 

Make enough cure to really completely submerge the entire belly in it. Leave for 4-7 days in a cool dry place (fridge works well), draining any liquid that comes off.

After the bacon has been rinsed and dried, a nice sticky film should have developed on the surface. This is called the pellicle. The pellicle will enable smoke flavor to nicely cling to your bacon. Smoke your bacon using fruitwoods, or a mix of other hardwood (European birch from Fairway market works well) and fruitwood (which you can find sometimes at Park Slope's Union Market). Make sure the temperature inside the smoker does not exceed 90 degrees Fahrenheit.

Smoke that bacon for as long as desired. This went on for about 8 hours.

This was bigger than it looks in the picture. It's about 30 pounds.

Slice the bacon thinly using a slicer (cheap ones from Amazon work okay for this). If you don't have one, good luck and make sure your knife is sharp. 'Course, bacon doesnt have to be sliced thinly. Now you can pan fry it, or build on the grilled flavor by grilling the sucker. I like to brush mine with agave nectar before I grill over hardwood charcoal.

 

 

Recipe: Electric Bacon

By J.J. Proville of Brooklyn, N.Y.

Yield: 40 to 50 slices of bacon

Ingredients for Cure:

3 pounds salt
1 pound sugar
1 pound brown sugar
5 bay leaves, ground
1 tablespoon freshly ground black pepper
1 tablespoon dried thyme
½ tablespoon freshly ground allspice
1 tablespoon red chili flakes

Ingredients for Pork:

1 4- to 5-pound pork belly
Cure, as needed
1 pounds applewood chunks
2 pounds cherrywood chunks
2 cups agave nectar
½ cup ground Szechuan Buttons

Directions for the Cure:

Combine salt, sugars, bay leaves, pepper, thyme, allspice and chili flakes.

Directions for the Pork:

Submerge the pork belly in the cure for 3.5-4 days. Remove from the cure. Rinse thoroughly twice. Optionally rinse a third time with dry white wine. Let the bacon air-dry uncovered in the refirgerator for 24 hours. In a smoker of grill over indirect heat, smoke the bacon using a mix of cherry and applewood chips or chunks for 6 hours. Remove from smoker and reserve in a chilled place.

Directions to Serve:

Using a meat slicer, slice bacon. Preheat a hot grill using hardwood lump charcoal. Brush or drizzle agave nectar onto slices. Grill the bacon slices for 1 minute per side or until crispy. Sprinkle evenly with Szechuan buttons and serve.