Recipes for bacon? Here's one, cook bacon then eat bacon. OK, getting serious, this is what I do to make my own bacon. I try to get as close to an 11 lb belly as I can so I don't have to do any math. I buy them at Costco.
Ingredients:
one 11 pound belly
7 ounces of Hi Mountain Buckboard Bacon Cure
1.5 TBsP Black Pepper
3.5 TBsP Brown Sugar
Mix all dry ingredients and coat the belly evenly (I usually cut it in half). Wrap tightly in foil and into large ziplocs. This will sit in the fridge to cure for 8-9 days, I flip them over every other day. Then, rinse them real good and soak them in water for 45 minutes, change out the water and soak for another 45 minutes. This makes them not salty as hell. Dry them off good and let sit at room temperature for an hour or so. I then hang them in the smoker at 135 degrees with no smoke at first to get them dry. Then apply smoke until the internal temperature reaches 128 degrees, usually 5-6 hours. I generally will slowly raise the temperature to no more than 150 so to not start rendering the fat. I put them back in the ziploks and into the fridge for a couple days and slice, vacuum seal and freeze.
