How to Make Maple Smoked Bacon

hey you got barbecue and bottles here today we are gonna be taking you through one of my absolute favorite recipes it's how to brine your own homemade bacon and then smoke it and I've gotta warn ya before you watch this video you are never gonna be able to eat store-bought bacon again this is absolutely one of the reasons that I got into barbecue and grilling and smoking in the first place and hands-down it's one of the biggest improvements over anything that you can buy at the store so it got 20 pounds of pork belly here we're gonna walk you through the steps of how to make the brine the steps involved in all of that brining process and then how to smoke it on the grill afterward so stick with us we're gonna show you the steps roll that intro [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] so before we get started on today's video we're doing this video as a bit of a challenge with Nate over at white youth under barbecue I'm gonna put a link to his channel below go check it out he's gonna be doing his own take on how to cure your own bacon at home and you know let us know down in the comments below whether you like his video better or our video better we're doing a bit of a friendly challenge just to collab on something here on on YouTube or you can go over my Instagram channel we've got a vote going on there let us know which one you prefer check out Nate's channel white thunder BBQ the guy's got some awesome videos there great tips in terms of recipes or cooks on how to grill smoke you name it go check them out again link down below in the comment section we're gonna start off with how to make the bryan or the cure so what you're gonna need is some brown sugar some coarse ground black pepper some kosher salt a little bit of maple syrup and then thyme or rosemary so you can pick one or the other given we're doing two pounds we're gonna try both and we'll split our Cure into two sections one will do rosemary one will do time I don't just compare and contrast and see what the difference is in the end so for every 5 pounds of pork belly that you're gonna be curing what you're gonna need is a half a cup of salt a half a cup of brown sugar a tablespoon of black pepper and a teaspoon of instant cure so that was one other ingredient I forgot to mention so insecure this is if if you're planning on keeping your bacon for a while this helps preserve the meat make sure that the pork isn't going to grow any harmful bacteria so let's get started so again we're gonna do four times this recipe given we've got 20 pounds of pork belly so to start with we're gonna put in half a cup of brown sugar so given we're splitting this into two we'll do 1 cup in each of our containers don't forget to pack down your brown sugar for your measurements that's how you measure brown sugar you don't want it loose for purposes of measurements and sizing then we're gonna go in with a half a cup of of kosher salt and again that means one cup for each of our Brian's or cures all right now a tablespoon of black pepper and again we're gonna means we'll do two in each of our containers [Music] and we'll go in with a teaspoon of instant cure this will double up perfect now maple syrup will use this later when we're actually applying the cure so now let's get the rosemary and thyme so first we'll start with the time and what you want to do at the time is actually break break off the stems so you want to take a branch like this and just break off the leaves here Oh smells incredible reminds me of the last time I personally I really like time if I were doing just one of these - I do time over rosemary hands down we'll see what the taste test tastes like in the end but you know aromatics wise just really really like like time in this this bacon recipe [Music] and you don't have to worry about getting stems in here once the cure is actually done we're gonna be rinsing the bacon so you don't have to be too particular if there's stems that come off in this process the other thing too there's no set amount of rosemary that I like to use just do this to taste depending on how strong you want your that rosemary flavor a rather thyme flavor to to permeate through the the cure perfect so that's about enough for us now we're just gonna mix this up perfect there we go now we're gonna do the same thing with the rosemary but it's gonna take these rosemary sprigs and we're gonna pull off a bunch of that the leaves just to really bring out the aromatics all right now we're gonna mix that up and we'll use this for the other ten pounds of bacon that we've got to brine what's that easy folks that's how you make the cure now let's get this onto the bacon all right now for the pork belly so you should go to your butcher and see if you can just order full pork bellies and I'll tell you what those look like here [Applause] I'll say you got a full pork belly like this what I'd highly recommend is these usually come with the skin arm just ask your butcher to trim the skin off and it's a step you can do yourself but you know what while you're there you're paying for you your pork belly might as well have the butcher do it save you one step at home what I'd also suggest is if you are doing that make sure you ask the butcher just to put the skin in a little bag so that you can keep it and take it home that kind of stuff you chop it up you put it out on the grill makes incredible crackling which may we'll do that on another video of some time but you don't want to have that pork belly skin just go to waste what you're gonna want to do is carve them into I usually carve each one into about three sections with each section ranging somewhere between three to five pounds and when we put these into plastic bags once the cure goes on and we toss them into the fridge this just makes it for a more manageable process so let's pick our thirds and just cut through all right there is slice number one there's slice two so you'll see I'm not really trimming much of this excess fat off if there's some here you know you might want to give that a bit of a trim but Bacon's a fatty meat this wall will render down one get in the pan afterward and you're actually making breakfast so I wouldn't worry about it too much I rarely trim pork bellies in amiable way before we actually brined them a rather cure them the other thing you might ask why am i doing almost 20 pounds of pork belly here well this process ends up taking somewhere between five to twelve days depending on how long you want to cure your vacant for so in my mind if I'm bait making five pounds I might as well just upgrade the batch do twenty pounds that's well that's that way I've got more bacon just to go around can pass some of your friends your friends will absolutely love this smoked bacon they'll really appreciate it so can't hurt just to increase the batch save yourself some time in the long run all right let's get the other pork belly out of here then we'll chop that one into thirds as well [Applause] just look at these bellies really nice and meaty it's gonna make for some great bacon all right now that we've got that done now let's get the brine or the cure on these all right now to get the cure on these what we're gonna do is now put on the maple syrup and what you want to do is get real maple syrup whether that's from the New England states you know we've got some from up here in Canada but don't use any of that you know high fructose corn syrup stuff at the grocery store you will not be using the original maple syrup so don't be worried about making a mess here you're just gonna want to pour the maple syrup on this will act as a bit of a binder just to help get the pork to cure or story rather than cure to stick to your pork belly go on on both sides and this is also gonna add an incredible layer of flavor simply come in with your cure and just give this a generous coat make sure you get that evenly across the pork belly flip it over do the same thing on the other side [Music] we're gonna lay a few more rosemary or certain rather thyme sprigs down here just on the bacon for a little bit more flavor now you're gonna want to grab the largest Ziploc bags that you have and this is why it's important just to slice the pork belly down into more manageable segments and you're gonna want to slide this pork belly right on in there just like that now if we've lost a little bit of that time just add that back in there try to flatten out here pork belly just like that now we're gonna zip lock this up we're gonna toss it into a cookie tray and throw it into the fridge all right so we got the thyme bacon and the rosemary bacon all wrapped up and does it want pouches and you really want to make sure you try and ziplock these as tight as you possibly can but the one thing I can guarantee you on this recipe is that these are gonna make this cure is gonna take a ton of moisture out of the pork belly as it cures in the fridge and these bags are gonna become full of liquids that get extracted out of that pork belly so make sure you put them in some kind of tray that has edge on the side so that it will catch any juices that come out of the ziplock bags to the extent that you didn't have a perfect seal and guaranteed no matter how well you think you've sealed these bags this is gonna leak so this is an absolutely critical step something you just don't mess up your fridge all right so we're gonna pop these in the fridge just like that and they're gonna sit there for somewhere between five to twelve days so depending on how cured you want your bacon we'd suggest leaving them longer we've seen videos recommending as short as five days we've see some that have gone up to twelve we tend to be in that 8 to 10 day range kind of right in the middle and what you're gonna want to do is check in on these bags every 2 or 3 days and just flip them over so now starts the waiting game alright it's Monday morning we're gonna check on the bacon but before you do that so we've had this in the fridge for four days now we've been flipping it every two days you'll see both packages we've started to get a significant amount of juice and moisture that's come out of the pork belly and that's not obviously not just the maple syrup that we were using so again flip these over just like that a lot of awareness every two days on day four we've already done this once you can see this tray already has a juice in it we were talking about that earlier in this video that no matter how hard you try you're always always Tork juice that leaks out of these bags so make sure you put it in the tray so there you have it folks it's that easy now we're gonna put this back in the fridge and let it rest for another two days so we've had a bacon brining for a little over a week now now it's the ultimate test let's get into the fridge see whether the brining is finished and we can throw it on the smoker so now we've got the bacon out of the fridge and the way to test whether your brine this finish working on the bacon is really just a feeling and you can feel that they can start to stiffen up there's a ton of moisture that's come out of these packages you can just see looking at that that's all moisture that's been wait to have it of the pork belly and that's really a great sign this this is really stiff it's not pliable is the original pork belly so I think this is ready to give the smoker but before we do that we're gonna take the pork bellies it out of the bag rinse them in the sink there's some people that would suggest you then put them into a water bath and further desalinate the pork belly but we don't do that step in and we're really pleased with the outcome so we're gonna save ourselves some time they're just bringing the pork about over this pink open up your bags running on a garbage can close by that you just toss that into you now let's turn on the safe just to get these quickly don't worry about getting all the time off of there that actually adds a nice flavor we're just gonna give it a quick rinse like that then move on to the next day now that we've got the bacon all rinsed off after the cure let's take this in the backyard and get the smoker fired up so we're gonna be smoking this bacon on the trigger this morning and we're gonna be using hickory pellets normally I'd use apple I just don't have any on me this morning so we'll see how the Hickory flavor turns out relative to pass batches that we've done what we're gonna want to do is get this on the low smoke setting we're gonna want to keep the temperature as low as we possibly can and we don't want the internal temp of the bacon to go over 160 because that's when the fats gonna render down on the bacon and you want to keep all that fat actually on your bacon so that it fries up in your cast-iron pan so before we fire up the smoker let's just make sure that should last us I mean this is only going to be somewhere between a three to four hour cook so we've got more than enough to master so turn this to the smoke setting turn it on we'll let that go for three or four minutes right now that we got a good amount of white smoke coming out we're gonna leave it on that smoke setting again we want to keep the temperature as low as we possibly can and now we're just gonna pile the bacon onto the grill [Music] all right now that we got this loaded up we'll close down the lid here we'll check in on this every 45 minutes or so just to check the internal temp and again we want to keep internal temps on the bacon seven 160 degrees whatever you're cooking hits those temperatures you know you're so that should take somewhere between for hours back on inside all right we've had this on for about two hours at this point what we're gonna do is just move the bacon around on the smoker in order to make sure we get it there we go close the lid down now got another two hours to go you'll see on the smoke setting here we've been keeping the grill at a fairly constant temperature of somewhere between 150 and 180 when you've got the trigger set to the smoke setting that's what the factory preset is it keeps it somewhere between those two temps and that's actually great for what we're trying to accomplish here because as a reminder we don't want the internal temp of the bacon to ever go above 160 so we've got about another hour left on this cook so we're just gonna check in on the temperature of this bacon here we're going to use the thermo pen this is an incredibly accurate instant read thermometer so we can just put and in here 1:25 we're just checking to make sure nothing's going over you can already start to see the smokes gone into this bacon you've got an incredibly rich color and this is coming along exactly as we need so we're gonna put the lid down for maybe another half an hour and then we're going to all right let's check these out just incredible I'm gonna zoom in there look at the color that we've got on these absolutely incredible you can really feel the firmness of the bacon now we had clearly got enough smoke over the course of the last three and a half hours here so we're gonna turn off the smoker and bring these inside just look at that so we've had the bacon inside resting for about 10 or 15 minutes and now what you're gonna want to do is cut it up into portions that you think you'll use in individual servings and then package it up and put it in the freezer so you can use either plastic ziplock bags you can use tin foil the best would be vacuum packaged bags if you've got one of the vacuum sealers but what we're gonna do is actually head up to the cottage right now what we're gonna do in our next video is take one of these backs of bacon and we're gonna cast use cast iron and actually fry this bacon up over a live fire so if you want to see that video make sure you hit the subscribe button below give us a like well--there's know in the comments your thoughts on this cook and thanks for tuning in we'll see you next time all right Bacon's in the car now let's go head up north [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: BBQ and Bottles

Views: 331,888

Keywords: BBQ and Bottles, BBQandBottles, How to make homemade bacon, How to brine bacon, Smoked bacon, how to smoke bacon, making bacon from pork belly, How to cure bacon, How to cure bacon at home, how to cure pork belly to make bacon, Bacon, Homemade bacon recipe, homemade bacon cure recipe, Maple Smoked Bacon, Curing bacon, dry cured bacon, salt cured bacon, bacon pork belly, how to cure pork belly, how to make your own bacon, bacon curing recipe, how to make bacon, making bacon

Id: 4pKgX2Qpfc4

Length: 22min 39sec (1359 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 27 2018