Bought this nice 8 lb pork belly from the asian market for $2.99/lb. Got my rub of kosher salt, brown sugar and 9 grams Cure #1 mixed and will rub it in. Place in freezer bag and cure in refrigerator for 2 weeks. Then I'll cold smoke for 10 hours.
I'll have high quality bacon for $3.00/lb when you can't even buy garbage bacon for 1/2 that price. Why don't we all cure our own meat? Is it because we're mindless sheep following the dictates of our corporate overlords or because we're lazy?
>>8495491
I live in eastern Ontario Canada, and I can buy packaged sliced bacon for $3.00/lb...
>>8495573
Really? How's the quality? Did you read the ingredient list? I'm certain it was a chemical brine injected and tumbled meat product. Life is short. No need to sacrifice quality in our food out of sheer laziness or fear.
Btw, canada produces a lot of high quality primal cut pork products. The leanest pork bellys I've found have been canadian.
>>8495573
Maybe welfare bacon that's like 95% fat. A regular 500g pack of bacon costs like $5-6.
>>8495785
Canadian bacon is just ham.
>>8495491
I can get awesome, thick bacon from costco for $4/lb. I'm not a poorfag, so I'd rather do that than go through the effort of acquiring pork belly from a shady slanteye market and curing it myself.
OP, are you using nitrates/nitirites? Do you think those really are necessary to properly cure bacon?
How are you going about cold smoking? I've only ever hot-smoked.
>>8496104
OP here. This post is a pork belly bacon I'm making, also called "streaky bacon" by the britbongs. Canada produces primal cuts from hogs, too. Pic in this post is a pork loin curing in a brine I have going that will be what you're thinking of as canadian bacon. Canadians would typically cover it in peameal flour and fry. Mine will be more the american style cured pork loin, hung and smoked.
>>8496142
For cold smoking I think it's "better safe than sorry." Also, you won't have the cured meat flavor without nitrates. It's only 9 grams of Cure#1 for 8 lbs of meat, which is a combination of 6.25% actual sodium nitrate and salt, so it's a very small quantity. Don't forget many vegetables have high concentrations of sodium nitrate, celery seed probably the highest.
When you look at the ingredient list of your favorite corporate brand, there will be a minimum of 5 unpronouncable chemical components.
>>8496135
>slanteye market. People living the american dream are evil. People providing unusual products at competitive prices are anti-american.
What worldview, precisely, do you see as being valid?
>>8495491
>cure in refrigerator for 2 weeks.
Five days is good enough. Don't forget to dry it one day. Oh, and by the way, the drying is the part that most home cooks don't like, and why this isn't often done at home. It's best done in a clean second fridge unit away from all your other food and flavors.
>>8496224
I agree. You have to develop a pellicle, particularly with cold smoking. Minimum of 24 hours rack drying. After the curing, it would really be perfectly safe to dry at 60-70F too. But I agree, better safe than sorry.
>Why don't we all cure our own meat?
Space and time, mostly.
>>8496321
>space and time
So essentially, existence? That's a bit lame.
>>8496391
Space, as in physical space to do it in and store it in
Time, as in most of us don't have the time of patience to dedicate so much effort towards such a specific project