So here we are, it's time for smoking. Now, I don't have a fancy smoker or purpose built smoker. So I am using this plane old charcoal grill, nothing fancy, nothing spectacular, and with this I am just going to have to watch very closely my temperature and the amount of smoke that I am putting out, constantly monitoring it.
I want to keep the temperature at about 175°F, and I want to keep the smoke constant. And I want to get the internal temperature of the pork to about 150°. So on here, I am using maple smoke, and I've got a temperature probe stuck through a potato to an outside thermometer, just so that I can monitor the temperature a little more accurately. This isn't so accurate.
So, the pork has been in the fridge about 12 hours now, so it's dried out a little bit and we form the pellicule. So I am just going to slide these onto the grill, and of course, indirect heat, very low smoke from the side, close the lid, and of course, if you have got a timed purpose built smoker, this next bit, you can kind of walk away and let the smoker do its thing.
I am going to have keep coming back and monitoring like I said, just to make sure I get the temperature and the amount of smoke correctly. But in about 3-5 hours I expect this will be done. Let's see if that works out. So there we go, we have reached the 150° internal temperature, it's time to pull the bacon off. Now this has been smoking for about 4 hours now, and the color has completely changed. A little bit of the fat has rendered out, the smell is absolutely incredible, and I'm sure that the flavor is about the same.
So it's a very basic recipe for bacon. This is my first time I am making the bacon. I have to admit, I had a little bit of a taste earlier. After I went straight off, and just before I put it into the fridge to get that pellicule to form on the inside, I sliced a little bit off and I fried it up in a pan, just to check out the saltiness. And I realized that it was may be just a little too salty. So I rinsed it for about an hour in cold water, just to the pull some of that salt out, left it in the fridge to form that pellicule, and then I put it out here to smoke.
But I have got to admit, the texture and the flavor of this bacon at that point was absolutely -- probably the best I've ever had. But when I cooked it down, it didn't cook down to almost nothing. It barely shrank at all.
So now with the smoking process, we add an extra layer of flavor to it, and I can't wait to taste it. So what I am going to do now, is wait for it to cool down, and then I'll cut the skin layer off. And with this one, I probably won't take too much fat off, because there really isn't a whole lot of fat on this belly. So I'll take the skin off, and what I'm going to cook immediately over the next, week, I'll wrap it up and keep it in the refrigerator, and what I'm not going to eat in the next week, I'm going to portion it down into dinner size portions, vacuum seal it and freeze it. And you've got to remember, this is a product that you have to keep cool, it will spoil. So you have got to keep it refrigerated, for probably a couple of weeks you can keep it. And the best option is to freeze any access.
So thanks for stopping by, and I hope to see you again, and give this a try, it really wasn't that difficult, and it's something that I am probably going to do again, and again, and again, and again, just to kind of refine the technique. So keep your eye on this space for future developments.
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