Easy food smoking at home. Smoke your own bacon!
77photo credit: tellerian.com
Apple wood, or mesquite?
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You might think that you need to invest in an expensive smoker if you want to start making your own home smoked bacon, fish or sausages. These commercially bought smokers will work well, but you can easily use your backyard BBQ to get great results...for free!
My last hub talked about curing your own bacon, so I'm going to use smoking bacon as an illustration of the technique used to cold smoke any food.
What does cold smoke mean anyways?
Cold smoking refers to applying smoke to a food, without adding any extra heat. You are not trying to cook the food, that will come later, only add a delicious hardwood smoke flavor. Hot smoking refers to a technique that uses heat as well as smoke to cook and flavor at the same time. Smoking BBQ ribs is an example of this.
For cold smoking all that you need are:
A backyard BBQ.
A few lumps of charcoal.
A bag of hardwood chips.
If you're doing bacon, you should leave the meat exposed to the air in the fridge overnight. You're looking for something called the pellicule to form. The pellicule is a tacky skin that you will be able to see. The smoke will adhere to this and create great tasting bacon.
Once you're ready to start:
Take your hardwood chips and start soaking them in a bucket of water. The more saturated with water they are (at least half an hour) the more smoke they'll release. Apple and Hickory are two great woods to use. Mesquite is a little too aggressive for bacon.
Remove the lower grate from your BBQ and put in an old aluminum pie plate, or cast iron fry pan. Turn on the gas, and get a few hunks of charcoal burning by placing them directly on the flames. Once they are good and lit, grab some of your soaked wood chips-- try to shake them to remove the excess water--and add them to your pie plate or cast iron pan. On top of these wood chips, add 2-3 lumps of burning charcoal. You don't want to add too much, as you're not trying to create heat, only smoke.
Put the grate back onto the BBQ and lay your slab of bacon on. Close the lid and watch as the smoke starts to billow out. You want to smoke the meat for about 3-4 hours, if you notice that the smoke has eased off, add some more wood chips (and charcoal if needed).
And that's all there is to it. You can use this same technique for fish, ham, sausages, even homemade chipotle peppers!
The only cautionary advice is to not add too much charcoal. If you add too much then you will no longer be smoking...you'll be cooking
- Here's my hub on easy homemade bacon curing
Three ingredients and about 15 minutes of work are all you need to make the best bacon you've ever tasted!
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Comments
You want to start with a peice of fresh pork belly that you've dry cured for about a week. See my post on making bacon for detailed instructions on how to do that.
You can also use the same process to make bacon-like meats with cuts such as pork shoulder and pork jowl. The pork loin is used to make Canadian bacon, but this is usually wet cured.
i live in Malaysia n bacon is COSTLY esp since i have 4 children. Would really like to try to make my ownbacon but i dont think i can get pink salt and hickory wood chips.What can i substitute them with?I have an open barbecue pit that wemade out of bricks nad have wire mesh over the top.is this ok to use? If i cannot get maple syrup, will maple flavored syrup, light or dark corn syrup or honey do? i look forward to your advice.Tks. Melaka, malaysia
Hi Choy Soo Ying,
I'm making this bacon quite close to you, in Thailand, so you should not have any great problems sourcing what you need.
Pink salt is just regular salt mixed with 5% sodium nitrite (not nitrate). If you can get sodium nitrite at a chemical supply store, you are in business. It is toxic though if taken in too large amounts, so you have to be carefull with it, and since you want to ensure even distribution, you may want to dissolve salt and sodium nitrite in water to the required concentratioons (that's what I did). If you're not sure about it, get some help, as you don't want to make a mistake. the nitrite is essential as it inhibits the growth of botulism.
Hickory is not essentiael, and any fruit tree wood will work well. I use Lumyai here, and it tastes great.
I think that instead of using artificial maple, you'd be better off with honey, or brown sugar is good too.
If you have any questions, I'm happy to help, especially as we're neighbors!
John,
I found your article on home cured bacon extremely interesting and also it brought back old memories on how my Grandparents and Uncles made home cured bacon.
They had the big advantage that they kept and killed their own pigs. It was important that they were fed correctly with grain, potatoes, and greens. about six weeks before killing, a pig was fed on grain only. This was supposed to give a nice taste to the meat.
The pig was killed, cleaned, and deboned before being salted and put into barrels with more lares of salt between each slab. It was left there for nearly 2 weeks, then removed and hung up in a cool place to dry. Afterwards it was sometimes wrapped in brown paper (sometimes not) and hung up on the kitchen ceiling. The bacon lasted for most of a year. The pigs normally weighed between 3 to 4 cwt. or 300 to 350 pounds before being killed.
You may think that by what I have written above that I am familar with home curing bacon, but I have never did it. My Grandparents stopped killing their own pigs about 50 years ago.
People always refer to belly bacon when they talk about home curing, Why? I think the back is much nicer with less fat. Also my Grandparents used just normal salt (I think) is it OK just to use ordinary salt. I also understand it is important to use a wooden barrel or box but in a hot climate not possible as it will not fit in a fridge. My Grandparents always killed during the winter so a fridge was not necessary and also not available.
Any further information you can provide regarding home curing bacon would be very much appreciated, as I intend to try it.
I also live in Thailand. I have worked here for the past 12 years. Looking forward to hearing from you. E-mail address, jokean@netzero.com
Regards,
Joe Keane
its just great your posts have helped me alot
John, I live in malaysia as well, and have been looking for local hardward that i can use as wood chips. what is the english word for lumyai? also, have you tried other local wood - mangroove, rambutan???
as for the pink salt (prague powder #1), there are stores in penang that sell it, but the mininum quantity is 25kgs. I cure my bacon with no pink salt; the bellies are fresh that day and i immediately put it into the brine. cheers, tom
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Come on by anytime to talk about making bacon or anything else!
Jerry lee says:
3 years ago
Sounds good. Does it matter what type of bacon you start with?