Cured and Smoked Bacon (with Maple Syrup & Whiskey)

Bacon … nature’s most perfect food.

This batch was an effort that deviated from an equalization method I’ve used in the past and I think it turned out well. Pork belly cured with a maple syrup and whiskey flavor profile for eight days, then slow smoked on the Blaz’n Grill Works Grid Iron pellet smoker using Lumber Jack MHC and Cherry.

(And yes … it’s Canadian and should be “whisky” … but ‘Merica so I use the “E” as is the way of my people.)

And welcome back we are doing some bacon and i don’t know what to call this quite frankly because i realized that i’m using canadian maple maple syrup and our good friends to the north i’ve got some fraternity brothers who are from up that way and everything else and they

Seem like a nice people i decided to add to the canadian maple syrup and also add something as opposed to bourbon a good american god-fearing drink i also decided to add some crown royal another canadian byproduct so this is canadian not canadian american bacon i guess

I don’t really know how to describe it uh got some nice natural pork belly here from h-e-b i was going to use this originally in some burnt ends for some pork belly burnt ends but decided to go with some bacon instead i’ve been wanting to try a maple flavored bacon

And i’m going to probably smoke this over a cherry wood um mainly for a from a coloration perspective plus i also like the flavor of cherry applewood’s wonderful mesquite’s wonderful you know especially like if we were doing let’s say a mesquite honey um of course the go-to would be hickory

Hickory smoked bacon is kind of ubiquitous but i think that cherry will pair nicely with the maple syrup and with the whiskey that’s going to be in there and to get started we got to figure out the flavor profile so here it’s very straightforward half cup of kosher salt

Half cup of dark brown sugar packed and a quarter teaspoon of prague powder number one product powder number two is typically used for things that are going to be dry cured and will be left at room temperature product powder number one is typically for shorter cures it’s used

In sausages it’s used obviously in bacon it’s a good choice here so what i want to do is just combine these agents real quick and get them all mixed up i’m gonna change up gloves in just a second this is easier to do with two hands

And now what we need to add are the canadian factors gonna start with a half a cup of good maple syrup and then i’m going to go ahead and do several ounces of good canadian whiskey and that can be done to taste again what you’re making really here is

Actually i’m just going to use my hands for this they’re clean um what you’re making is i guess it really is a marinade technically i mean you can see the the composure of this it it’s a soupy glop i guess to a certain degree over time everything will break down

Nice and smoothly and it’s going to provide the ability for again over the next eight or so days i may go as far as 10 i probably won’t go over 10 even if it’s not feeling quite where i want it but what it’s going to do is it’s going

To provide the ability for those flavors to really get in there now when i vacuum seal it i probably won’t do a full vacuum because there is liquid in here and while i love my little food saver uh doesn’t always play nice with liquids i probably need a chamber sealer at some point

If i can talk myself into it so everything’s mixed up nice and smoothly gonna go ahead and pour this in now and make sure that it is covering both sides as equally as i can so this point what i want to do is go ahead and get this all massaged into the

Best degree possible you know i could use my hands get in there i mean the hands are the best tool you’ve got really in the kitchen or at least alton brown would say that for most things they are the ultimate multitasker but one of the things that you do

With a cure like this is you’re going to be flipping this on at least a daily basis i typically do mine once in the morning and once the evening just to make sure that everything is distributed and you’re not looking again for perfect coverage because it will never happen that way

But what i do like to do is make sure they’ve got space in the bag let some drain and then just let it cascade down the other side this is going to be a sweeter bacon a slightly sweeter profile i’ve got some plans for this of course uh making it into

A burger prep would be wonderful but i’m going to do a couple of other little sneaky things in the future where you’ll you’ll get to see this and a couple of other side items so now the next step is to get this sucker sealed so with this i will allow it to draw

Just a wee bit of air but i’m going to keep a close eye on it so you can see of course it’s flattening out and at this point i want to get just a little bit more air because the liquid isn’t traveling up yet it’s going to seal on its own

And now i’ve got a decent little package to put in the fridge there’s not going to be any worry about contamination uh i will of course be making sure that it stays in a glass pan to make sure that it doesn’t drip or anything else but here’s the bacon prep straightforward

Again tons of flavor that’s in this mixture uh the salt of course i mean salt is one of those flavors that i think that most people do enjoy even if it’s not always great for you in large quantities but over time i’m going to be massaging this i’m going to be flipping this

And making sure that of course it gets equal coverage over the entire piece of pork belly so we’re going to check back in 8 to 10 days and at that point i’ll be rinsing it and getting it ready to put in the fridge

So i can then slice it and use it in a variety of preps so we’ll be back in a few days and after eight days the great bacon experiment resumes it has been sitting for now eight full days it’s firmed up tons of liquids been produced as the cure

As the salt draws out the moisture from it uh you can see that it actually looks much more like bacon than pork belly now and it’s going to look like that even more once it goes on the smoker but for now not only do i need to drain off

This liquid but i will need to place this or at least i’m going to choose to place this in the refrigerator overnight in order for this to form a pellicle and a pellicle is when there’s a protein process where it basically forms a sticky goo that is horribly unscientific but that’s

The best way to know how to describe it so this sticky goo this pellicle will form as air moves over it as the cold interacts and so on again it’s gonna be in the fridge for about 24 hours before i start the smoking process and that will allow the bacon to dry out

A bit so now that the bacon’s out we’re going to give this a quick rinse you know some people choose to apparently submerse you know it really just in cold water uh to get the salt content off my take on it is if i did my calculations

Correct in terms of the weight of this uh in terms of giving this a good rinse and making sure that any of the surface salt and the cure is off this thing then it should taste time without any sort of issue again the look of this thing is is

Gorgeous it does feel like a bacon in fact right now i can slice this up and it’s ready actually it’s cured but that smoke flavor will add the traditional bacon flavor so let’s okay so by now the bacon is thoroughly rinsed and into the fridge it will go for an

Overnight ride to pick up that pellicle that i was talking about before um my hope is that the maple flavor really comes through i really do love the look of this it’s a good piece of pork belly it’s got plenty of fat in there but again you can

See how pronounced the lean is that should be good bacon for almost anything whether it’s going to be a a smokehouse burger whether it’s going to be i don’t know you know armadillo eggs where you wrap things in bacon there are tons of things that i can i can turn this into

More than likely i’m going to turn some of this into lardons that i can actually cook with but uh again make an explosion i’m hoping there’ll be enough leftover once i distribute some of my friends that’ll be on the near horizon so into the fridge for an overhead run

We will pick back up tomorrow with the actual smoking process okay so the day for smoking for the bacon uh it’s been sitting for about 24 hours in the refrigerator a little bit of air go over the top you can see that it’s straight at the touch

The pellicle uh the light has formed i could have left it in for another 24 hours but i’m content with the way it is right now so the way i’ve got the the smoker prepped is i’ll be cooking this at 175 i’ll be using my fireboard to manage temps um you can

See that again i put a pan underneath catching drippings mainly just to ease uh the need to to take out the foil off the drip pan uh for the next smoke for whatever that may be but i’m gonna leave it on the wire rack uh the cooling rack and my reasoning for this

Is simply uh ease taking out take it in that type of thing it’s super simple i am going to get as i mentioned before be running this with temp on my fireboard both chamber temp and for the protein itself so i want to go as close to

Center as possible and as far in as possible again the fireboard i can manage for my phone just like i can with the the blazin app for the grille itself so again it’s going to go to 175 once i crank the sucker up i’ve usually leave mine at 250 for the start process

But in this case i’m just going to go ahead and go down to 225. once it gets attempt i’m going to back it down to 175 let it go for a nice very controlled slow smoke i don’t want this to be a traditional hot smoke uh the pink salt in there made

Sure that it’s gonna be food safe through the smoking process once it hits 150 is that’s gonna be my target temp to remove let it cool down to room temperature refrigerate overnight and that way i can slice up tomorrow okay the final part of the bacon process it’s hit 150

And it is ready to come out so it’s looking great from this side of things um temp management here is gonna be the key it’s not like most barbecue words purely by feel or whatever else but not sure how well you can see that again it

Uh it’s a rainy texas evening uh i let this go for 175 for most to cook and then bumped into 25 after about three hours um beautiful looking shrunk up just a bit i’ll be able to get a better shot once we’re inside okay the proof will now be in the

Pudding it looks like the bacon uh held up well overnight in the fridge um the smell of it still has that that nice aroma of maple um smoke definitely as well a little bit of whiskey in the background i don’t know whether that’s my imagination or not um

For a first time i’m i’m thrilled so what i want to do at this point is slice and again there there is right white slice i don’t have a meat slicer so for me it’s going to be just kind of eyeballing it and doing my best

To come up with some slices i want to square it off a little bit as far as what the bacon looks like i mean that’s bacon um good marbling i i do like a higher fat content than some people on bacon just kind of the way i grew up

And i also don’t like bacon super crunchy i’m kind of particular so we’ll see how this goes in terms of slices i’m gonna fry up a couple pieces and see how this goes you know some of these irregular chunks for example will make great lardons i can cook with them

This is an experiment a lot of this is going out to other people to kind of taste test for me see if they like the recipe i know one person is using it just as plain old breakfast bacon i know that a family member is going to be using it as uh

In cooking green beans everything else to see what kind of flavors it imparts and for me i toyed with the idea of doing a bacon explosion i want to save that for a different piece of pork belly i’ve got so for me this is probably going to

Start out first on bacon burgers i’ve got i picked up some nice sourdough buns got some hamburger meat there’s nothing more american than a bacon burger i’m not a fan of bacon cheeseburgers that’s a bit of an aside which i’ll get to and why i don’t think cheese belongs on hamburgers um

But we’ll do that in another episode so again i’m going to continue slicing these things i’m going to fry up a couple pieces as test so you’ll be able to see what it looks like okay got some pieces of bacon going uh start off in a cold skillet go over a

Medium heat that’s not rocket science on how to cook bacon i do regret that my cast iron skillet is dirty and i’m too lazy to cook it but i also needed a skill a little bit bigger uh the only thing i’ve got right now that’s clean is my 10 inch skillet

Didn’t want to cut the pieces down the smell is amazing so i’ll show one more piece one more quick snap when i flip them to show what it looks like and then the taste test and then this video will be in the can all right the epilogue for the bacon experiment goes

On so when in vacuum sealed up stuff that’s going to go over to other people that way they can freeze or cook immediately if they want to diced up some of the end pieces as kind of like little mini lardons i can use to season vegetables or whatever else and then

I’ve got some bacon that i’m gonna be using uh for some burgers over the weekend so i’m gonna go ahead and leave those outside of a vac seal bag since i’m probably using them tomorrow what the moment of truth let’s see how this tastes i did the cold skillet and i found that

The the residual sugars that were in the in the cure that i used probably ended well maple syrup as well probably caramelized but too much it didn’t really burn but it did get super dark super quick before the bacon was done so i kicked the heat back down

To a lower setting and just let it go a little bit longer as a result it’s a little stiffer than like i typically like a floppy bacon i guess but let’s see how it tastes flavor is robust that’s the only way to put it definitely get the maple syrup in the

Background oddly enough the whiskey comes through i don’t know um is it worth the effort oh god yes the flavor is amazing diced up and then maybe maybe i don’t know like a with a pasta i think this would be amazing it’s you know the funny thing is the flavor of this

Is actually reminiscent of some of the italian uh you know for example cheeks uh charlie and so on it it’s it’s got that that definitely not it’s not a hamminess but it’s definitely a little bit more than typical american pork these were these were natural pork bellies so hopefully starting with good pigs

I’d like to experiment with some berkshire or mangosito or something else you know a heritage breed pig but for the time and effort i expend in this this is definitely worth it i again if i’d gone with a longer brine the salt probably would have been overpowering i might try next time just

Go with a seven day as opposed to an eight day cure i was very careful to make sure that i flipped the bacon uh daily in the fridge to make sure that once once i didn’t over penetrate compared to the other but overall this is this is a nice little daily snack

Uh especially if you’re doing carb friendly things other than the the sugars that went into it but again those mostly cook out both in the pan and in the smoker flavor’s great though um hopefully you try your own i’ve seen videos for years people i’ve done with other means not this

Method i’ve used an equalization cure before and wasn’t crazy about the results i found it to be too hammy i think i might go with this brine technique moving forward again i’m going to play around with it i do want to do a peppered bacon soon

And i might try with some other unique flavors but we’ll see so hopefully enjoyed it it’s probably gonna be a long video with the number of cuts i had to make well worth your time hope you guys enjoyed it