Friday, December 9, 2011

BACON!


Top picture is bacon hung to dry after coming out of the cure and getting rinsed off. If it is still wet when it goes in the smoke house it gets sort of streaky. Next pic is of bacons after about 4 hours in the smokehouse.
I will smoke these about 10 hours. A internal temp of at least128F. is required to insure that trichinosis will be destroyed.




 I like to use maple wood for smoking hams and bacon. I've tried different fruit woods like apple but they seem to give to heavy of a smoke flavor with my smokehouse setup. My set up uses the wood fire for both the heat and the smoke unlike "modern" smokers that heat with electricity or gas.





Here's a pic of my primitive smokehouse set up. The cylinder to the left is a old water heater jacket which is my fire box. The white box going off the right edge is the smoke house. There is about six feet of heat duct pipe between them. This helps keep from getting it too hot in the smokehouse which will shrink your bacon and cook some of the fat out if it's very high. When I first built this I had the fire box directly below the smokehouse. Bad, bad idea. To hot, fat melts,drips in fire box, smokehouse in flames!
  I will post recipe and instructions on Recipe/Remedy page tomorrow.





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