Making Bacon

[Surrey Boy]

Excellent thread!

[bighornbob]

My bad only looked at first page

[allan]

I have lots of pigs right now if anyone wants one to try their hand at processing there own right now!

[Gateholio]

Crikey,change your settings! This should only be half a page!

[Jimbo]

Everything is edible but the squeal.

What's the plan for the head ?

[landphil]

Went through this last fall, butchering a pig is far different from wild game as we found out. Was a steep learning curve. Our homemade bacon turned out great, especially the small batch of maple bacon I made. Did you hot smoke yours to 160F like I did to follow the recipe? Not sure why you would need to since it gets cooked well over that to crisp up anyway, but I decided to follow the recipe to a tee for the first attempt. No pics were taken, except for the 15 lbs of breakfast sausage I made FAR too lean, tastes great, but dry texture. Live and learn.

[Beachcomber]

Great thread. Stupid question perhaps but you say that if you don't use cure (nitrates) it won't stay pink. Is the colouration all that is lost if you leave out the cure\ nitrates or does it lose some of its preservative value and or taste too?

[Gateholio]

Jowls on the head can be treated similar to pork belly. The rest can be boiled and made into head cheese or whatever you want.Once I get the jowls I chop up the head and give it to the dogs to chew.

Nitrates keep colour and are preservatives,too.

[Dash]

This is super interesting! Thanks for posting.

And well.. I'm pretty sure everyone's mouth is now watering.. And we'll all be dreaming of bacon... Food porn at its best.

[ElliotMoose]

Awesome thread gate. Always wanted to do my own bacon. Question, anyone try a similar method with bear? Would it work?