Add some sizzle to your homestead with a bacon cure recipe, bacon brine recipe, and ham brine recipe for smoking farm-raised pigs.
When we moved from a 16,000-square-foot lot to a 6-acre piece of property several years ago, one of the first things we decided to do was keep pigs.
We raise seasonal pigs, meaning we buy feeder piglets from a farmer and raise them for meat. We get Hampshires and Blue Butts, a Hampshire cross. They’re generally quite friendly and interested in people, and they dispose of food waste like nothing you’ve ever seen.
Raising our own pigs has allowed us to bring home the bacon, so to speak. I do, however, understand that raising pigs isn’t for everyone. Fortunately, people who want to make their own bacon without pig-rearing can buy slabs of reasonably priced pork belly at the grocery store.
The Brine
My own adventure into the world of home-cured bacon began many years ago with a cookbook a friend gave me: an entire book of bacon recipes, beginning with making your own bacon. The recipe called for rubbing the salts, sugars, and spices into the pork belly. You then put the belly into a sealable bag and into the refrigerator.
Twice daily, massage the bag and flip it over. The moisture from the pork belly is drawn out and creates a brine with the salt mixture. After 10 days, rinse well and smoke.
It was awful; so salty it was only good for making soups, and then only in meager quantities.
The next time, I followed the same recipe but only steeped the belly for seven days. Then, I soaked and rinsed the salty pork for half an hour in ever-changing pans of fresh water before smoking it. Better, but it was still too salty.
That fall, I brined a ham for Thanksgiving. Modesty aside, it came out really well. I decided to try putting the pork belly into a brine rather than letting the juices create their own brine. Ham requires an injection of brine to get the flavor carried entirely through the meat. I wasn’t sure something as thin as pork belly would require the same step but wanted to try it. As an experiment, I cut the belly in two. I used the same brine recipe for both pieces, but I injected brine into only one piece.
Using family members as my tasters, I cut the smoked bacon into lardons and fried them. The clear preference was for the non-injected pork. Both were still a bit too salty, but the injected pork was more so. I wasn’t disappointed to remove an extra step from the process.
Over the next couple of batches, I gradually cut back the salt until I came up with a recipe I loved.
Rinse and Dry
After brining, the bellies need to have the excess salt rinsed away. I focused the rinse stage of the process, and homed it in. I give the belly a good rinse in cold water, place it in a pan of fresh water for about 20 minutes, empty the pan and fill with new water, soak for another 20 minutes, and then rinse again. I then place the belly on a rack (I use a cooling rack on top of a jelly roll pan), pat it dry with paper towels, and return it to the refrigerator to air-dry for another 30 to 60 minutes.
Hot and Cold Smoke Bacon
All of my early bacon smoking was done on our Traeger. The smoke function runs at around 160 degrees Fahrenheit, so the belly got a bit cooked during the smoke process. After chatting with a friend who also does a fair bit of smoking, I decided to try making the bacon using cold smoke with a smoke tube. The tube is stainless steel, approximately 1 foot in length and a couple of inches in diameter, perforated with hundreds of holes and closed off on one end. I use an old smoker shell I found to hold the pellet tube, as the smoker already has racks and a lid. You could easily use a briquette-style camping barbecue as well.
Recently, I smoked several smaller bellies and had a couple of friends do a blind tasting. I smoked one on the Traeger (hot smoking) for three hours, and three others using the cold smoking method. Those pieces I smoked for one, two, and three hours. I color-coded the samples so there’d be no implied correlation of smoking times.
My first taster’s list in order of preference: the three-hour cold smoke, the two-hour cold smoke, the one-hour cold smoke, and the three-hour hot smoke. He noted that the 1-hour cold smoke had a good hickory taste, which was from the pellets I used. He found the three-hour cold smoke to be savory and smoky, and the two-hour cold smoke to be mild and smoky.
My other taster’s list in order of preference: the two-hour cold smoke, the three-hour cold smoke, the one-hour cold smoke, and the three-hour hot smoke. She found the two-hour cold smoke to have a sweet and savory flavor with a great aftertaste. I prefer the two-hour cold smoke.
Curing Salt
Pink table salt is not interchangeable with curing salt (also called “Prague Powder”). Don’t try to substitute regular pink salt for pink curing salt. Curing salts help keep the meat a nice pink color and extend the freshness.
- Prague Powder #1 is used for foods that will be cooked first, such as bacon.
- Prague Powder #2 is used for foods that won’t be cooked but fermented, such as salami.
My Bacon Cure Recipe
- 3-to-4-pound pork belly
- 1 tablespoon pink curing salt #1
- Water for rinsing pork belly
Bacon Brine Recipe
- 2 quarts water
- 3/4 cup kosher salt
- 2/3 cup brown sugar
- 1/3 cup maple sugar
- 3 bay leaves
- 1/2 tablespoon black peppercorns
- 9 allspice berries
- Bring all the brine ingredients to a boil. Stir occasionally to ensure all the salt and sugars have dissolved.
- Remove from heat and pour into a 6-to-8-quart food-grade container.
- Stir in 1 tablespoon pink curing salt, usually called “Prague Powder.”
- Add 2 quarts fresh cold water. Allow brine to come to room temperature before adding pork belly. Place a weight on top of the belly to keep it submerged in the brine. I have a plate that fits nicely in my brining container.
- Put a lid or wrap on the container and refrigerate for 7 days, turning the belly once a day. (This will keep you from having a portion of the belly continually touching the side of the container and perhaps not allowing an even brine process.)
- After 7 days, rinse the belly thoroughly and soak in cold fresh water.
- After 20 minutes, discard and refresh the water bath. Allow to soak for another 20 minutes.
- Rinse the belly again and pat dry. Allow to air-dry in the refrigerator for at least another 30 minutes, using a cooling rack for better airflow.
- Smoke the bacon for the amount of time that suits your taste. The two-hour cold smoke is my favorite, but feel free to experiment to see what your favorite is. It’s really hard to go wrong. When I’ve over-smoked pieces, I find that adding some to my elk chili puts the flavor of that dish over the top.
Final Tips and Thoughts
In preparation for this article, I had a couple of questions from readers. One question was about using KuneKune, a pig breed known for their high fat content.
My thought is this: Give making bacon a try using the cold smoke method so you don’t lose too much fat due to drippings (I nearly caused a fire in my heat smoker once trying to smoke pig jowls). If the resulting bacon is too fatty to enjoy as breakfast meat, try using it to wrap medallions of meat for cooking, or jalapeño poppers or dates for appetizers.
Another question I received was about preserving pork without refrigeration. I know there are ways to do this; for myself, I’d never try to do so without expert guidance. A couple hundred years ago, did people travel with unrefrigerated salt pork? Assuredly so. How many got sick from a piece past its prime? I can only hazard a guess. A more likely method of preservation for the modern-day pork fan is through the fermentation process used to make hard and semi-hard salamis, using Prague Powder #2.
This fermentation process uses sugars (often in the form of dextrose, derived from wheat or corn), curing salt, and controlled humidity. Dextrose is used to promote the growth of lactic acid; salt, in addition to adding flavor, helps the fermentation process and prevents the growth of undesirable bacteria. The humidity helps keep the exterior of the salami from hardening and preventing the moisture within from escaping. The overall drying process can take perhaps 30 days to 6 months. Again, I wouldn’t try this process on my own without expert guidance.
Ham Brine Recipe for Smoking
For those of you interested in making ham, the brining method is much the same as for bacon.
- 1-1/2 total gallons of water
- 2-1/4 cups salt
- 1-1/2 cups sugars
- (1 cup brown and
- 1/2 cup maple)
- 1-1/2 tablespoons
- Prague Powder #1
- 4 bay leaves
- 1 tablespoon black peppercorns
- 10 whole cloves
- 10 to 12 allspice berries (depending on their size)
- 1 teaspoon yellow mustard seed
- You’ll need a much larger food-grade container for a ham than for bacon. Combine all ingredients to create the brine. After 4 days in the brine (turning daily to ensure all sides get equal brining), take out the ham.
- Using a meat injector, inject about 2 cups of brine throughout the ham. Be sure to get all along the bone. You’ll know the ham is fully injected (perhaps 20 or so injection sites) when it no longer accepts more brine.
- Return the ham to the brine for another 3 days.
- At the end of 7 days, rinse the ham thoroughly and pat dry. I use my commercial (hot) smoker for this.
- Smoke on the “cold” smoke setting for 2 hours (on my smoker, that’s approximately 160 degrees Fahrenheit). After two hours, raise the heat to 185 degrees and cook for another 2 hours. Next, raise the heat to 275 degrees and cook until the internal temperature of the meat is at least 145 degrees but no more than 165 degrees.
If, when you cut into the ham, you see portions that are brownish rather than pink, those are the portions you missed during the injection process. Don’t worry. They’re fine to eat, but they’ll taste like plain pork, not like ham.
LeeAnne Zwinkle lives on a small farm in Donnelly, Idaho. In addition to raising pigs and chickens for meat and eggs, she has 11 therapy goats and a very tolerant husband.
Originally published as “For the Love of Bacon” in the July/August 2024 issue of Grit magazine and regularly vetted for accuracy.