The Texas BBQ Forum

Had a busy Sunday. Had to break in my new A-Maze-N smoker and try my first batch of bacon. Used Traeger applewood pellets. Getting it going.



Tossed the bacon on and figured why not do some cheese while I'm at it?



Let the cheese go for about 3 hours and then pulled it. At that point, the dome thermometer wasn't even reading 50F. Sometime later in the cook, the bacon looked like this



Pulled at 8.5 hours because I needed the grill for dinner. I think it would have continued to smoke at least another 2 hours if not more.

[Monday, I finally got around to slicing the bacon. Played around using a variety of thicknesses to try and figure out what would work best.



Got it all sliced up and sealed for future use



Bacon turned out really good. A bit salty. Might need to rinse it better or soak it some to draw out some of the salt next time, but for a first try, not too shabby.

Nice! As the bacon sits, the saltiness intensifies. What you'll discover in about 5 days time is the salty has doubled in intensity. Just an FYI. Don't get discouraged. Use double the sugar to the salt, and try to use the salt as sparingly as possible on bacon. Ham is another story here and much more forgiving than bacon when it comes to salt. Belly/side is very versatile but also not as resilient as the other hearty cuts that get cured, so a little goes a long way when it comes to salting the belly. If you have to ever soak the bacon after curing, you've used too much salt (even if the recipe/process calls for this). Any recipes I try out for bacon, if it wants me to soak after the cure, I'll pass.

Nice looking bacon. I did some over the weekend which turned out well. Cold smoked for 18 hrs. and then took it to 145 degrees over applewood.

Txdragon wrote:Nice! As the bacon sits, the saltiness intensifies. What you'll discover in about 5 days time is the salty has doubled in intensity. Just an FYI. Don't get discouraged. Use double the sugar to the salt, and try to use the salt as sparingly as possible on bacon. Ham is another story here and much more forgiving than bacon when it comes to salt. Belly/side is very versatile but also not as resilient as the other hearty cuts that get cured, so a little goes a long way when it comes to salting the belly. If you have to ever soak the bacon after curing, you've used too much salt (even if the recipe/process calls for this). Any recipes I try out for bacon, if it wants me to soak after the cure, I'll pass.

Hmm...that's no bueno. I used the recipe from Charcuterie. Figured with all the talk it on different forums it would be pretty good...

Great looking stuff. I've got some curing now. I'm smoking it tomorrow.

Looks good to me. Nice and lean. What thickness did you settle on? I need some in the cure down to last pack. CF