Donald's Bacon Bytes

Man do I love some good bacon. I’ve been dry curing bacon for a few years now and decided I wanted to try doing a wet cure. I came across a great thread about this over at SmokingMeatForums.com and decided to give it a try.

Wow! It was amazing!!

This is a pretty easy way to cure bacon. Basically you just need to get a container, mix up some cure and let it sit for a while. I do a lot of marinating and brining so I already had a good container on hand. I liked the Rubbermaid 8-Quart Container. It has 2 handles on the side and fits well in my fridge.

After mixing the cure in the container (mix it well) and putting the belly in, I let everything sit in the fridge for 12 days.

After 12 days are up, I take the belly out of the container and rinse it all off. Then I set it on a wire rack in the fridge for about 3 days. I want it to dry and form a pellicle. Be sure the meat is on a rack that allows air flow underneath the belly.

After all that, I’m ready to smoke!

This time, I decided to use my webber but still use the the awesome A-Maze-N Smoker. I put the tray of pellets in the bottom of my webber, put the pork on the main grill rack, put the lid on and let it smoke. I lit both ends of the A-Maze-N so that I would get more smoke during the process. Doing so also gives you about 6 hours of smoke. So, that’s how long I gave it to smoke. I’ve read about others giving it much longer. I’ve considered getting another A-Maze-N so I could swap out the burned one quickly but haven’t pulled the trigger yet.

**Update: I know use 2 trays and only light 1 end on each tray. This lets it go for a 11-12 hours total.

TLDR

• Mix all ingredients into a large container
• Put in container with solution & meat into fridge for 12 days
• Rinse meat and put in racks and back into fridge for 3 days
• Cold smoke for 11-12 hours
• Eat!

Cure Ingredients

• 1 gallon water
• 3/4 cup coarse sea salt
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 1 tbsp cure no. 1 pink salt
• ¼ cup garlic powder
• ¼ cup onion powder
• ¼ cup fennel seed