How to Cure and Smoke Your Own Bacon
George Weld and Evan Hanczor are, respectively, the owner and chef of Egg, a breakfast-focused restaurant in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Together, they authored the new cookbook, Breakfast: Recipes to Wake Up For, which hit shelves March 31. Here, they share a recipe for sweet, spiced bacon for those who want to take their breakfast game to the next level.
Advanced Bacon
Yields 8 pounds of bacon
If you really love bacon, take a crack at curing and smoking your own. You’ll need a cold-smoking setup to do the smoking. If the Internet doesn’t yield a good plan for making one, I recommend Charcuterie by Brian Polcyn and Michael Ruhlman for all the basics of smoking meat. (If you don’t want to mess with smoking, you can still make a delicious unsmoked version of bacon by curing a pork belly as described below.)
Use a digital gram scale to measure ingredients when you’re curing meat — it’s the best and safest way to get everything right.
This recipe yields enough bacon to last you months. You can divide the cured bacon into 1-lb. pieces and freeze them until you are ready to use.
110 grams kosher salt
80 grams turbinado sugar
20 grams Instacure #1 (available online)
6 grams black peppercorns, coarse ground
4 grams coriander seeds, toasted, finely ground
4 grams mace, ground
3 grams star anise, coarse ground
2 grams red pepper flakes
1 9-pound pork belly (about one belly)
Mix all ingredients except the pork belly and rub thoroughly on the surface of the meat to coat. Let sit 10 minutes to allow cure to adhere. Lay out sheets of plastic wrap large enough for the belly to sit on, sprinkle half the remaining cure on the plastic wrap. Set the belly on the wrap, cover with remaining cure. Wrap in the plastic very tightly.
Refrigerate for one week, turning once a day. When the meat feels firm to the touch, remove the wrap and brush off the cure. Smoke it slowly with your favorite flavor of woodsmoke for at least 3 to 4 hours, until internal temperature of 155ºF is reached. Let cool, then cut into slices and cook or freeze for later.
More recipes for bacon lovers:
Beer-glazed maple bacon, which might be better than candy
A bacon weave, for a better BLT
Bacon-wrapped dates with almonds perfect for your next soiree
Are you a bacon lover? Tell us below!
