Home Smoked Bacon

Don't be afraid to smoke your own bacon. Once you smoke your own bacon, it will be awfully hard to go back to store-bought!

4.47 from 13 votes

Prep Time 2

Cook Time 7

Smoke Time 5

Total Time 7 7

Course Smoked

Cuisine American

Servings lbs

Calories 1 kcal

Slice the pork belly slab into manageable pieces.
Weigh each piece of belly. For every 454g of pork belly, you need 10 g coarse kosher salt, 5 g brown sugar, and 1 g curing salt. If the math stresses you out, use this use this awesome
web-based calculator and select the following options; US curing standards, Skin Off. Then I use the measurements listed for salt, sugar and the minimum amount of nitrates.
Mix up the required cure for each slab and rub it into the pork belly.
Slide each slab into its own ziplock bag, and remove as much air as possible before sealing and placing it in the fridge for 7 days.
Each day, flip your bacon and give it a little massage.
On the 7th day, remove the cured pork from the fridge, give it a really vigorous rinse, then place on a wire cooling rack in the fridge overnight.
On the 8th day, remove your bacon from the fridge and smoke it at 185f for 4-5 hours, or until it reaches an internal temperature of 150f.
Allow bacon to cool before placing it in the fridge or freezing. We like to slightly freeze the pork belly before we slice into bacon.
Vacuum seal bacon into desired quantities and keep in the freezer until ready to cook.

Serving: 1gCalories: 1kcal

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