How to make Classic American Smoked Bacon - without Nitrites

hey there folks welcome to the channel and Welcome to our series on smoking meets a series sponsored by smokin' it smokers in today's episode I'm going to show you how to make that classic American smoked bacon but without the use of any nitrites let's get started all right here we go this is our pork belly just got it from The Butcher and let me show you what we're going to do to process this belly to make bacon now technically speaking this doesn't require a lot of preparation you can cure the entire piece and you could smoke it and it'll be just fine but it might be a little challenging to work with so what I like to do is square the bacon up notice a portion of the belly is relatively thick and while if you look at a different portion of the belly it's going to be a little bit thinner squaring the Belly Up helps this bacon cook evenly which is going to give you a better product notice also on the Rhine side on the skin side I went ahead and removed the skin I would suggest you do the same you're going to remove the skin anyway and I find that removing it before you cure it and cook it is going to give you a cleaner product and you don't waste any smoke on the skin so remove skin and let's go ahead and square up the belly okay so let's make our first cut notice the top of the belly right here where you have the point and then it kind of comes down at an angle I'm just going to go ahead and make a straight cut all the way down and this piece that I'm cutting off you can cure it you could smoke it and you'll have you know some more bacon we make a lot of sausage so I'm actually going to use this for sausage meat and remember that belly meat is usually 50 meat and 50 fat so when you add that to your sausage recipes if you're going to do that make sure you accommodate for the amount of fat and protein that it has when I flip it over notice right here on the right hand side you got a really thick piece and all I'm going to do is I'm going to find where it starts to get thick and make a straight cut all the way down and once again you could take that piece that you're cutting off cure it smoke it and it'll cook independently although a little bit longer because it's thicker but that'll make for great bacon as well all right now here's the piece we're going to use for me this is a manageable size but if you want to cut this in half again to make it a little bit smaller that's all right as well the next thing step in this preparation is to weigh the meat and this is going to help us determine how much of our spices to add and if you check the description box below you'll find a recipe link all you've got to do is enter that weight into the box and it'll tell you exactly how much of each spice to add as far as spices go we're going to keep it super simple we've got salt dark brown sugar black pepper if you want to add Cayenne smoked paprika aromatics this would be the time to do that as all of those ingredients are going to flavor your meat during the curing process all right there's our black pepper let's pop that into the cup and let's look at our final ingredient this ingredient is what's going to keep our bacon safe from harmful bacteria during that slow long cooking process it's called Eco cure number one this is a no nitrite curing agent that protects your meat against botulism and other harmful bacteria it also helps retain that pink color that you typically would get by using nitrites and it does all this through the power of Botanicals like Rosemary and citrus so it's an absolutely incredible product and and it's a great alternative especially if you're allergic to like dyes or nitrites or anything like that so the way we're going to use this product is we're going to add one percent by the weight of our meat and that is it it's a very easy product to use it smells incredible I mean you could definitely pick up the Citrus and the herb element from this all-natural product and so let's go ahead and add that to our cups this can also be used in smoked sausages hot dogs corned beef pastrami literally anything you would use uh you know cure number one you could use Eco cure number one and you'll end up with a nitrite free product so let's go ahead and add this to our cup and here's the Cure mixes that we're going to be using for our bacon now we are making two slabs of bacon and each slab had a slightly different weight so whenever you make this recipe just weigh each slab and add the appropriate amount of spices to each piece remember the recipe Link in the description box below will calculate it for you all you got to do is enter your weight but it's pretty simple one percent pepper one percent Eco cure number one two percent salt and two percent brown sugar very easy one one two 2-2 alright so let's go ahead and look at the belly and because this is an equilibrium cure we're going to be using 100 of that spice mix on that belly we don't want anything to go to the waste [Music] all right our cure mix has been applied and it's now time to let the curing begin I'm going to take this and place it into a vacuum seal bag I find that way to be the most efficient if you don't have a vacuum sealer you can always use a Ziploc bag and that works okay as well let's go ahead and get the bag ready and as you can see here I've made it extra large I'm also folding down the edges so we don't get that sealed dirty and we're just going to take our belly and pop it into the bag the next step in the curing process is to let it cure now depending on how thick your piece of belly is will determine how long you let it cure in your refrigerator and I'm going to put a curing calculator in the description box below all you've got to do is enter the thickness of your belly and it'll tell you exactly how long it needs to remain in the refrigerator our two slabs of belly are seasoned they're in their vacuum bag and it's now time to cure and what I'm going to do every day is I'm going to massage one side of that belly which is going to help the Cure penetrate a little better once I'm done with the massage I'm just going to go ahead and flip it over and we're going to do that for both pieces now I am going to stack these on top of each other and that's okay if you do that as well and because our belly is about an inch and a half thick it only needs to cure in our refrigerator for about four days and this is what our belly looks like four days later it's 100 percent nitrite free completely cured and protected against harmful bacteria let's take it out of the bag and give it a rinse you'll notice that there is a decent amount of juice that's been accumulated that's water that's been pulled out of the belly during the curing process both from the sugar and the salt and we're just going to give it a quick rinse under some cool water and what I want you to notice is the color of the belly look at that beautiful red color that's been retained after the curing process and this process happens naturally through the Botanicals that are in Eco cure number one so it delivers a beautiful bacon color without the use of any nitrites absolutely gorgeous okay so at this point our bacon is now cured it's been rinsed off and it's now time to smoke and contrary to popular belief you don't have to let your bacon dry before you start smoking matter of fact the smoke will actually adhere to the bacon a little bit better if it's slightly wet when you put it into your smoker and because of how we cured it you know with the Eco cure number one you can smoke this any way you want if you want to do a cold smoke you could do that safely if you want to do a hot smoke that's fine too for today's recipe though we're going to be applying a nice steady stream of apple and hickory smoke over a low and slow type of cook let's get these on some hangers we're going to be using some bacon hooks from smoking at smokers and I like bacon hooks because it allows your bacon to cook and smoke evenly if you don't have bacon hooks or you don't have the capability of hanging your bacon you can always lay your bacon flat in your smoker but you might have to rotate it through the cooking process just to ensure that it Cooks evenly now you want to be careful because those tips are incredibly sharp and it looks like we are good to go let's get this into our smoker we're going to be using a number four digital Wi-Fi smoker from smoking at smokers this is about their mid-size unit and as you can see here in a second when we put both slabs of belly inside the smoker we easily have room for at least two more possibly three more so there we go our belly's in the smoker and it's now time to apply smoke I personally like using a cold smoke generator to apply smoke because I can really dial it in if you don't have a cold smoke generator you can always just add your wood to your Firebox and that'd be okay as well like I said earlier we're using a combination of Hickory and apple wood you could use Cherry you could use pecan really it doesn't matter it's a personal preference so we've got our bacon smoking at this point let's go ahead and close it up and get our smoker fired up because we're going to be doing a nice low and slow we're going to get maximum them smoke penetration and let me show you how we're going to set up this cook because this digital smoker allows you to program times and temperatures so that your meat gets cooked perfectly every time all right so let's cut the smoker on in our initial cooking temperature is going to be 175 degrees Fahrenheit and it's going to cook like that for three hours after three hours the temperatures are going to bump up to 200 F and it's going to cook at 200 F until we reach an internal of 145 degrees Fahrenheit our Smoke's been running for about 10 minutes what I'm going to do is just turn the speed of our air pump down to about 50 percent that's going to reduce the volume of smoke coming out we want nice and easy smoke and we're going to let this cook till we hit our Target temperature after we hit that 145 F we're going to place our pork belly into the refrigerator so that it can firm up then we'll give it a slice and see how we did [Music] foreign [Music] foreign guys our bacon is finished let's give it a taste and see how we did that is so good it's not too salty it's got the right amount of sweetness it's got a beautiful smoked flavor and it's Ultra crispy which is how I like it mm-hmm all right so I hope you get a chance to try this recipe and if you have any questions leave them in the comment section below great big Thanks goes out to smoke it at smokers for sponsoring this video I'll put a link to their website in the description box below check out their huge selection of smokers cold smoke generators and accessories if you like this video give it a great big thumbs up and if you're new to this Channel and you'd like to see more content like this don't forget to hit that subscribe button and that notification Bell I look forward to seeing you in the next one bye-bye foreign [Music]

Channel: 2 Guys & A Cooler

Views: 54,327

Keywords: how to make bacon, nitrite fre bacon, easy bacon recipe, cured meats, meat preservation, smoked meats

Id: jJH8KWY1oJk

Length: 11min 19sec (679 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 17 2022