How to Make Beef Bacon | The Bearded Butchers

let's make y'all some beef bacon we promised it in one of our recent videos today is that day we've had beef bacon that we argue will rival pork bacon and we may even put the two to the test in a little side-by-side comparison we've been getting this question a lot do you guys ever do beef bacon do you ever sell beef bacon what's beef bacon what's it taste like we're here to show you so we're just going to break this down we're going to separate the chuck from the rib as you as you've seen us do a bunch of times on camera once we remove that chuck we're going to pull the rib section down we do not need this for our beef bacon this is going back on the rail beef chuck goes back in the cooler we're going to focus right here on this portion called the beef plate so get the skirt steak removed first now we simply take our band saw we kick it on we're going to make this beef plate just a little bit wider than what we normally would just gonna zip it off there like that we are gonna start pulling the membrane off there's a piece of skirt called the inside skirt that lies right here on the inside of these bones so we're going to go ahead and remove this first inside skirt in our opinions maybe a little bit less desirable than that outside however it's still very nice chunk of meat highly marbled today we're not focusing on that we're going for the beef bacon so kind of like removing those spare ribs off of a pork belly we're going to do the same thing with these beef ribs the only difference is on the beef ribs we're going to just trim them out for ground beef we're not going to smoke these like you would the pork spare ribs so when extracting these this beef has been hanging in our cooler dry aging so it's a little bit tighter than say you know like a pork belly would be but we'll just work our way down through here pushing that bone out we'll trim that up for some grindings this portion we are going to just pretty much square it up and you can see when i do this how much this piece is going to resemble a pork belt pork belly so if you look on this end um it already starts to resemble bacon just with the the meat and the fat content going through there on the side you can see it's got some nice marbling in it on this end has a little bit more meat a little bit thicker fat we're going to take this entire section that's nice and squared off if you didn't know any better you probably think that was a pork belly i'm going to get it on the scale scott is going to take it from there and he's going to show you how we cure it 14 14.45 pounds you got it from here yep it's all yours two gallons cold water this is my jpv just plain vanilla has nothing to do with vanilla it just means this is a very simple recipe this is a base recipe you can go add things do whatever spice it up but this is going to give you your base flavor of course we're going to smoke it when we're done and we're probably going to use black seasoning to coat at least half of it two gallons cold water two ounces celery juice powder this is the vegetable stable 506 you can also use two ounces of sodium nitrite or pink cure so i'm going to dissolve my two ounces celery juice powder and then i've got two pounds of sea salt you can also use table salt i like to just get it in there use my hand work it around you can actually fill the salt granules granules okay that's ready to go now this is the super secret part you have to take and you have to start it on one end and you have i'm just totally i'm totally joking there's nothing special about it you simply put it in this liquid the jpv liquid and it goes in the cooler for at least 10 days 10 to 14 days depending on what kind of fits into your time frame after that we're going to get it out we're going to smoke it and then we're going to slice it and we're going to try it and we'll likely even put it in a side-by-side comparison with pork so don't forget scott talked about the 10 days you have to remember that this was a 400 and what 440 pound carcass maybe 450 pound that's a side side of beef so this is a nice big thick plate used for this bacon so you're going to have to change your procedure if all of a sudden you kill like a small jersey steer or a heifer or something and the thing dresses out 200 pounds a side on the rail and all of a sudden you know it's it's this i'll change i'll tell you what to change just grind that up in the hamburger and go get a good beef very true but i'm just making the the comparison here if you if you don't kill you know you don't butcher an animal the same size as we're doing here your end result is going to change because of the the thickness of the meat so you'll have to back your days down and do less days in your solution or it'll be too salty good point seth and i'll also point out i'm going to get something that i can weight this down with you can use ceramic dinner plates those work really nice because you do want to get it fully submerged it will float so i'm going to get something to weight this down and it goes in takes a nap we'll see you then this is one of our favorite parts hanging these products getting them ready to go into our smokehouse so these are pork bellies the beef belly that we cut and we put into the cure it's in our lug over here so the plan is this is what we're going to do normally we would have put these on our you know pellet grill or something like that but today we're going to use our commercial uh enviro pack smokehouse right here in-house we're going to put these we're going to put the beef belly right in with these pork bellies we're going to do a side-by-side we're going to see how they cook throughout the process and then of course we're going to slice and we're going to taste and things like that i do have to mention these pork bellies are not for sale the beef belly is also not for sale otherwise if they were for sale we would not be combining the two species on the same cart in the oven at the same time so if clarification these items are not for sale so that's how we're able to do that last pork belly going on our truck we thought it would be a good idea to take the beef belly split that sucker in half and season half of it with our black blend because our black blend coffee and molasses base is crazy good on red meat we've already done it on a pork belly we're gonna find out what it tastes like on a beef belly we don't want to coat the entire belly we're going to cut it in half we'll season half we'll leave half plain we'll get him on the truck time to crack the lid and see what we have it has that nice classic cured belly look it's got that little bit of that that purple color going so what i'm going to do is i'm just going to cut this in half and if i had to guess it's going to be a lighter red almost a cherry red on the inside bingo i called that it's got that cured look on the outside you can see that nice fat running through there that marbling and so the chunk that i'm going to season i think i'm just going to pat dry a little bit with a paper towel that way that seasoning sticks nice on there but before i start seasoning this i want to take a pork belly and i want to just hold this next to it so you can see the difference in color with that pork belly so you can see the pork belly is even a little bit oh lighter pink still has that grade cured look but just so you can see a side by side pork belly versus beef belly definite definitely a different look i'm gonna get the plain portion of this beef belly hung first so we'll just hang that right on our truck now get that black seasoning shaker open and just do a nice liberal coating of that coffee rub mixed with molasses just get this coated down real nice here again you know just an observation i'm making when you when you skin the animal you actually when you when you remove the hide this is where you want to be careful that you don't you know put those big score marks in it because it would what would happen is is it would cut down into the meat whether it's pork or beef or you know whatever then that that ends up going through the whole process and you have a big big gash in it so just remember that when you're removing the height on the animal that it's going to affect the finished product throughout the whole process you know depending on your knife skills and and how well you do with that seasoning sticks real nice to it there's no need for a binder or anything like that since this belly's been cured it's still just a little bit wet i did dab quite a bit of that moisture off there but i think it's pretty well set so we're just going to go ahead and take our bacon hanger poke it right through the top got it all seasoned up i do want to make mention this bacon hanger right here how crucial that is in this process the way it pokes through the top of this belly um this slab it holds it together real nice keeps it uniform gives you something to hang on you know to use to hang this this slab on as it goes into your smokehouse i did pull up on amazon and you can in fact find these we will throw in the link so right there they are they're not super super expensive trust me you're gonna want some if you try to do any uh bacon at home because they're if you're gonna hang it if you're gonna lay it on a grate that's one thing if you're going to hang it get yourself some hooks let's get this added to our stash making sure we don't get any of that black seasoning on the plain slab let's get them in the smokehouse voila welcome to the smokehouse room here at whitefeather meets enviropack martini 280. this is a one truck oven this is what we run here for our commercial products today we decided to use our commercial oven um for the true side-by-side pork belly beef belly and it's just really easy to use let's not lie about that step number one we're gonna go ahead and get this in uh just get it in the oven make sure the bellies are spread apart real nice we're gonna take our probe and we're gonna find the belly in here that's the thickest portion which i believe it's gonna be this beef slab so we're just gonna we're gonna probe it in the thickest portion it's all ready to go we will seal her up so the cool thing about this oven is it has this mp2500 controller on it it has a bunch of built-in schedules i'm not going to share the schedule with you because some of those are our trade secrets but what i will do is i'll show you how we can go in and we can open a schedule we can find it select it run it and now what that does is it'll take it through the proper cook cycle monitoring temperatures all the way through the process so per usda requirements for our you know tracking our our cooking process that core temp dry bulb wet bulb we can do that all through this instrument located right here on the front of the uh the oven now i do want to mention this is a a natural uh wood chip fired smokehouse it's electric heat but the smoke that's entering this oven is real wood chip smoke so we have a bin on here we fill with wood chips they auger down they fall onto a heat plate it regulates at what stage we want the smoke on the product uh throughout the whole process i should mention whenever you're smoking something um you know take a belly for instance whether it's pork or beef or whatever 225 degrees typically five six hours we take we our our bellies are considered our bacons are considered fully cooked so we always take them to the desired temperature for that if you take them somewhere in the mid 150s you're going to be in good shape it will then be considered fully cooked and you can take it from there but just remember 225 degrees five to six hours watch your temperature watch for that you know that finish internal temp pull them get them cooled down and then you can go into the slicing process but we've got a couple hours here you know five six hours to wait as these hang um while we're doing that we're gonna go ahead and start processing some cattle we'll pop back out here in the smokehouse when these are finished we'll show you what kind of smoke color that they get we want to see you know how the how the beef reacts to the hickory smoke versus the pork and then we're going to get them in the cooler we'll get them chilled down we'll show you the slicing process and then we'll get some into the into the skillet so um thanks for coming along and stay tuned here for the next step about six and a half hours in core temp on these bellies 153 degrees let's crack open the smokehouse and see how they look they smell good oh yeah all that hickory smoke blasting you in the face when you open the door put that nice color on there let's see how we did with that that beef bacon yummo that's the one that was not seasoned here's the one that was seasoned with the black see they shrunk up a little bit i've got that nice color going only thing we have left to do get them hung in the cooler or they're already hung get them placed in the cooler get them chilled down we're going to let that happen overnight tomorrow we're going to slice them up we're gonna get them in frying pan we're gonna put some pork belly or some pork bacon in the frying pan we're gonna do some beef bacon do a little comparison so come back for the slicing and the sizzling we're back and we have the beef bacon inside this lug so i'm going to show you all what we ended up with i also have a pour a pack of pork bacon that we've already smoked and sliced just to do a comparison but inside the slug we have the chunk of beef belly that we cured in hickory smoked that's unseasoned then we also have that slab that was seasoned with our black blend look at that that looks awesome we're going to get these out we're going to get them on the meat slicer from the meat slicer scott's going to take them over and get them on the black stone so we're going with a griddle for these we're going to fry up some beef bacon we're going to fry up some pork bacon we're going to do a little side by side let's start with this slab that was not seasoned just get it on the meat slicer and we're going to run a few run a few slices through i have a nice medium thickness going get squared up a little bit so as you can see and this belly will change too as we go so you can see compared to the pork the pork probably has a little bit more meat running through than the beef this end pretty much turns to mostly fat just a little bit of meat right there but we'll kind of see how that changes as we go look at the size of those slices it'll be interesting to see how much they they shrink down when we fry them you okay with the thick slices scott or you want some thin ones too uh so you can see as i'm going down through this slab that the meat fat ratio is changing as we go a little bit more meat towards this one end and these slices i am making a little bit thinner the regular slab is sliced now it's time for that that black now you have to keep in mind that this was the same slab we cut it in half season one did not season the other so i have a hunch that the fat content and this one is going to be different than the first half that we did but there's only one way to find out look at that certainly a little messier with that seasoning on there but i have a feeling that it's gonna taste mighty fine so you can see how much that fat changed on the second half of that slab that looks more like a pork pork bacon there check it out i have a half a slab of unseasoned a half a slab of season with black some of it sliced thick some of it sliced thinner and i probably have a nice there's there's probably close to 16 pounds here i would think a beautiful beef bacon now what i want to do is i want to get a piece of this pork bacon and i want to show you the side by side just the size difference in these two colors nearly the same but the size is where i'm really blown away by so this was your average size pig that we took this from and you saw the size of the beef belly when we cured it so from here my job's done until i taste it scott you're up because i need to get started cooking don't i yep this is where we get the bacon sizzling i'm gonna do a half a half a black stone of basically the plane oh that smell got to throw down a few pieces of pork bacon here for for the side-by-side taste test and he's just he's like a i'll be the first in line unmovable how's this that's better oh this is where the smells really hit me anyway that black is crisping up so nice with that a little bit of that cane and brown sugar and molasses caramelizing over here i think a few of these are going to come off of here together so obviously you have all kinds of opinions on how people like their bacon cooked we have extra crispy we have petrified we have i just got one thing dinner object please do not microwave your bacon meat doesn't really belong in the microwave in my opinion but i agree please don't microwave your bacon so to get the full flavor and effect out of this we are certain to make sure that we don't overcook it just get a nice crispy and scott's doing a mighty fine job i'm ready to dig in tuck that in your collar ready to sample bacon means i have a beard greasy i have a beard that's my bib yours isn't long enough no at least it's the right color all right i'm going to go for regular beef bacon first keep that palate clean yep here we go get you taken care of go for that same piece oh oh my goodness i i say that in every video and you guys are like wow this guy puts on no it really it's first kick somebody didn't tell you you'd think it was good pork bacon the first piece you gave me wasn't quite big enough there was there's um what i love about it is that wow yeah it it's um so you think in terms of like beef pastrami things like that you don't get any of that i just get pure bacon bacon just that's basically 100 bacon now i was expecting a little bit more of a beefy flavor and it's not no it's not beef it's um i was expecting the fat to have that like beef rib flavor a little bit but instead it has it has that that candy-ish pork flavor now we've got to go on to the black which i'm really excited about because i just i recall from our pork bacon video oh oh look at that crunch on the outside the way that that just grabs that salt and it just it gives you like this big round richness like all through your mouth that that's absolutely absolutely fantastic and it's nice because when you use the black seasoning the salt content that's in it doesn't intensify when you use it on the product because it's it's more about the the molasses and the coffee flavor coming through than it is the salt you know what's left at this point let's put it up against the pork bacon okay good bacon natural hickory smoked the interesting thing though that has a little bit a little bit of a porky flavor it's a little bit it's it's certainly classic bacon but that beef bacon has a little bit of a of a wow factor to it almost like a like the crispy fat on a steak let's just let's just go there here we go spencer we're doing it to you again yes hammer that thing it's good real good that's the longer we the longer we stand here we're just going to eat both plates i suppose there's many reasons you might use beef instead of pork wow um some people maybe just don't eat pork some people don't eat pork maybe you have beef available to you so you're going to want to get a plate or a belly uh beef you know so from that region you can certainly use the the jpv method that we showed you and uh turns out awesome which by the way 15 pounds of bacon who wouldn't want more bacon if you want to make the same bacon and pork refer to our previous video that we've already done on how to make pork bacon um duplicate it with beef and here you go so i think it was a smashing success i'm thrilled with it it's not the first time we've made beef bacon but it's the first time we've made it for you guys on youtube i'm gonna have a tough decision ahead of me next time i go to reach in the fridge on a sunday morning to cook up breakfast for the family because i think i'm going to go for a pack of beef bacon next time i i'd have to you can't beat it incredible so there you have it folks today america's butchers the beard of butchers made beef bacon start to finish out of the carcass through the recipe through this the the curing smoking slicing frying process this turned out awesome this is a question we got all the time do you make beef bacon do you sell beef bacon now you know how to make beef bacon exactly like we did and we're we are certain with the same method you're gonna get the exact same results that we had 100 thanks for watching we'll see you next time don't forget subscribe to our channel next time see ya [Music] you

Channel: The Bearded Butchers

Views: 1,031,958

Keywords: Bearded Butchers, Beef Bacon

Id: t0BFk6RdS1M

Length: 30min 59sec (1859 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 09 2021