How To Make The Best Homemade Bacon

I would consider bacon a nearly perfect food everybody loves it even vegans and you think it couldn't possibly get any better right [Music] look you can make it from home so incredibly easily and it's about time that more people start doing it it requires minimal ingredients with the exception of a smoker if you choose to smoke at which I'll talk about ways to smoke it later on in the video some pork belly some salt a little bit of sugar and a little bit of curing salt which is really easy to find nowadays plus you know a little bit of patience now let's do this shall we I like to start off by making a big batch of dry cure that way I always have some of my cabinet to use whenever I want to make it and all I got to do is get a percentage so in a large bowl you're gonna add 2 cups or 400 grams of kosher salt 1 cup or 200 grams of granulated sugar and 6 and a half teaspoons or 60 grams of pink curing salt now when I say curing salt yes I mean sodium nitrite this is also known as frog powder number one not prog powder number two but number one it's pretty widely available in stores nowadays but if for some reason you can't find it I'll have a link below in the description for the one that I use anyway once everything's in your bowl give it a nice whisk until everything is thoroughly combined and store it at room temperature you're only gonna use a little bit of this stuff at a time when making bacon but now you always have it at the ready now for the most important ingredient skin-on pork belly now it can be pretty much any way but you want it to be at least 3 pounds or 1360 grams I know there's a lot of numbers happening right now don't worry it'll be in the description but anyway it's important to know the amount in grams just because you can get a salt cure percentage I do two and a half percent so basically you're just gonna take the weight of your pork belly in grams and multiply it by point zero to five and that number would be the weight in grams of how much cure you need to use here's a little advance and don't don't know what that is now this pork belly weighed three pounds of seven ounces or 1571 grams so using that formula I was able to figure out that I needed 39 grams of that dry cure mixture and you're gonna take that measured dry cure and spread it all over your entire pork belly all surfaces the top the bottom the sides all the edges and make sure that every last sprinkling is used rub it in real nicely now what's this thoroughly coated in your dryer it's pretty much good to go at that point but I like to add some flavor aromatics so I'll take some crushed and bruised rosemary sprigs maybe some garlic cloves with the skins left on just barely crushed with the back of your palm some toasted and crushed juniper berries all this stuff is optional you don't have to add the aromatics if you don't want to but you can use pretty much any hearty aromatic that you want now once all that's done place your cure rubbed pork belly into a two gallon ziplock bag and place in the refrigerator to cure for seven days flipping it halfway through so four days in flip it over on to the other side and there will probably be some liquid that comes out and it'll fill up the bag that's okay that's totally normal just make sure that that look what's being distributed because that's gonna help cure the pork belly oh and I almost forgot don't forget to label your bag with a sharpie or pen or whatever so that you know when you started it that we can keep track of how many days it's been curing okay now you can place it in the fridge now once your pork belly has been fully cured for the seven days and all that jazz rinse off the cure thoroughly with water and Pat it dry with paper towels now at this point traditionally you should be smoking it so I chose to smoke it but you can also just use an oven a lot of the flavor really just comes from the cure rather than the smoke but I will say that the smoke adds quite a lovely flavor whether you use an oven or a smoker the cook time is gonna be the same you're gonna cook it at 200 degrees Fahrenheit until the internal temperature reads a hundred and fifty degrees Fahrenheit now because I know people are gonna ask I used one of my old master bill propane vertical smokers I added a good mix of both soaked wood chips and dry wood chips and I spoke that bad-boy as previously described at 200 degrees Fahrenheit until the internal temperature reached 150 degrees Fahrenheit I did add wood chips about every 45 minutes so I only really needed to add them about twice to think maybe three times in the whole process because this only takes about two hours so here's a funny story about how smoking this one for stuff I had to go into the public area of my apartment building in order to do this legally and after I poured myself a drink as you see here it started raining profusely so I'm out here smoking alone in this courtyard with rain going all over me but I always come prepared now what's your pork belly is done you're just gonna take a quick look and appreciate that like really just appreciate that and while the fats still hot you're gonna go ahead and remove the skin using a sharp knife it'll actually peel off on its own but I like to use the knife to help guide the skin off that way it comes off evenly and it doesn't pull off any major chunks of fat oh and while I say hot I mean like warm don't burn yourself doing this let it cool down a little bit before you do that and now your pork belly has become bacon now the first thing that I would suggest is letting it come down to room temperature and refrigerating it overnight or at least about 8 hours for the fat to solidify so it slices easier and it cooks properly and now you have your bacon and it'll last about two to three weeks in the fridge or frozen indefinitely and a quick little side note don't just cut it into thin slices try cutting it into super thick cubes and then frying those up but leaving the inside nice and tender and I promise you that will make the most amazing baked potato or salad or whatever just trust me you now have so much versatility with this of course you could always just fry them up as Norma over medium heat flipping often and you know you know how to make bacon it's not it's not rocket science alright guys and that is it homemade bacon surprisingly easy as I said before a little bit of patience and minimal ingredients and you'll have your very own bacon from home there are so many advantages of making homemade bacon that makes all the time worth it one of the biggest to me is not only the huge flavor upgrade but also the versatility of being able to slice it into whatever shape and size you want it to be this recipe is actually adapted from Michael Ruhlman's book charcuterie it's a fantastic book it is hands-down one of my favorite cookbooks if you guys want to get it there will be a link below who actually gave me a quote on a book that I put out which is no longer available rest in peace but he's a really cool guy and he makes extremely informative books so if you guys want to check it out don't be linked below but with all that said if you enjoyed this video and you learned something leave a like subscribe and I will see you next week [Music]

Channel: Joshua Weissman

Views: 1,965,104

Keywords: bacon recipe, how to make bacon at home, how to make bacon, homemade bacon, bacon from scratch, curing bacon, curing meat, cured meat recipe, joshua weissman, cooking series, youtube cooking series, homemade bacon recipe, DIY bacon, sat bawl pro, how to make homemade bacon, bacon, meat, bacon recipes, food, pork belly, pork, curing, cured meat, cured bacon, curing bacon recipes

Id: mkAEYrgvVUk

Length: 6min 55sec (415 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 20 2018