So the briquette snake didn't chain light as intended and the first briquette basically burned and didn't light the 2nd. I think the method has some potential, but I need to try a different stacking arrangements. The 4th reload of the pellet tray (pecan) burned cleanly, but it was ~25f inside the egg in the morning.
I decided to finish these with a hot smoke to make sure it was safely "ready to eat" off the grill, so I loaded a lil pyramid of b&b and ran the digiq dx2 at a steady 160ish until I hit an internal of 145 (about 6hrs).
It definitely darkened and took on more of a cured ham character. I served one of the thinner slabs that didn't have much fat to friends last night with the intention of frying some and trying some as it came off the grill. Well we never even got to cooking a piece of it because it was delicious as is. (This started as a 15lb Niman skinless Duroc belly) It was understandably, a total smoke bomb. Salty, savory, extremely smoky, and went well with a couple glasses of red wine. No sharpness or creosotey acrid flavors. Nobody was mad about the ridiculous amount of smoke. I think it'll probably mellow and get better over the next few days, if it lasts that long, but for now I'm pretty happy… 20/20 hindsight I should have pulled some before the hot smoke for a comparison.
It was definitely an experiment but I'm happy with the outcome. I gave about half of this away last night, and I'm already planning my next one!
by fistfulofsanddollars
4 Comments
Ohh boy.. that look tasty!
Love this for you. All the haters in the comments of the original post aren’t eating delicious home made bacon today.
Always good to experiment to find new techniques. Homemade bacon is always fun to try. Now if you can find a butcher then can get you a beef belly, that is fun. Beef bacon for sure interesting.
I have a couple Niman lamb bellies that I’m still figuring out what to do with. I’d love to try a beef belly!