Curing Bacon

I've recently been curing my own bacon with..well some success but now I'd like to know about adding some flavour. Do any of you have a recipe for me to try out?

How do you do it? The actual process I mean.
Do you use honey or brown sugar?

At the moment,,,sea salt , white and brown sugar and curing salt. It's ok when fried up but I'd like to add some grunt now :)

Hellon, what is grunt?

Sorry Andrea...grunt just means giving it something special..you know like a 4X drive has the extra 'grunt' to make it go further?? It's an Aussie saying...sometimes I forget that people don't know what I'm talking about....

Oh that's OK....I thought maybe that was a seasoning I wasn't Familiar with, ha!

So some extra kick to it....

I've always wanted to cure bacon....

Well...that's what I'm looking for the 'secret grunt' seasoning haha!!!

Curing is not that hard Andrea and...the results so far, just using the main method have been very acceptable to the family but...me being me, I'm trying to explore more. I think Canadian people cure a lot of their meat and smoke it too but...I need flavours in curing guys ???

I've also found a recipe for turning corned beef into pastrami which I can't get enough of!!

I'm thinking of what goes with ham & wonder if cloves and pineapple might be doable.

Apple always goes with pork. You could try some kind of Apple wood chips when smoking it or seasoning salt with Apple if you don't smoke it.
We loved to cure our own bacon, we smoke ours and add Apple and hickory wood chips.we have used misquote also.

Kay...what is misquote?

I have some hickory chips, do you think they would flavour the meat if I just dunked a few in the brine?

Larry...do you think pineapple may turn the meat sour if it was added to the brine?

EDIT

I googled the American way of curing and it seems quite different to how I've been doing it. There's a lot less water used and the meat and brine is placed in a ziplock bag and the meat is rubbed and moved around in the bag for a week or so. I have been putting the meat into a large container, submerging it in the brine and just turning it over every day. What do you guys do?

My Ignorance shows. I knew that corned beef is soaked in brine, but I thought bacon was dry salted.

Mesquite is a small thorny tree in Texas and further west that burns very hot & smokeless. When you smoke with it the smoke comes entirely from what you add to the chips (or soak them in)

You weren't wrong Larry. I think bacon can be wet or dry cured. Obviously the way I do it is wet curing but, when I googled how to flavour that's when I discovered that American's use much less water (only 1/4 cup per pound of meat) and I cover mine.

When I make pastrami from corned beef I rub different spices all over it and cook it at a very low temperature for 6 hours....I don't put it in any brine.

Do you buy completely untreated pork belly for your bacon? Our FFA sellers use two local processors. I may try my hand at it.
How much do you do at a time?

Yes Larry....untreated and fresh (not previously frozen). Generally pork belly but I've also tried pork loin which is much leaner. I make 1-2 kilos at a time, it freezes really well. You should give it a go :)

Take your cured pork belly and wrap it in aluminum foil loosely put your hickory on any hot coals from a pleasant smelling smoke . The heat is not important because the old smoke houses cured meat by drying as in country ham . The hickory smoke will absorb into the meat

I looked into it today.
I believe I will give it a go.
Probably while Rosaura is in Nicaragua visiting her sister. That way I can clean up the mess before she gets back.
;8-)

Have you tried garlic juice?

Michael...that sounds yummy but I don't want to smoke it. I'm looking for ways to flavour it without smoking :)

Larry....there is no mess, well not the way I do it. It just sits n the fridge for 4 days and then it's cured lol!!!

I have tried garlic but you couldn't really taste it in the bacon....I'm trying smoked paprika this time round.

I used to get request to smoke hams that had already been smoked so I am now guessing that hickory is an American obsession

We use hickory chips a lot here for barbecuing...weber barby that is. If we have turkey for Christmas it's always done in the weber with hickory chips. It tastes great and all the heat from cooking is left outside...bonus, when you have 40oC Christmases.

Has anyone tried making mustard? I've had 3 attempts so far today and each one has ended up down the toilet..I can't seem to get it to thicken...very frustrating!

Hickory is very plentiful in Tennessee :)

I am considering making a batch of poke salad this summer... pokeweed grows wild in my backyard

^^^

Isn't it toxic Michael????

I may reconsider . The leaves must be boiled twice in separate water . I did brew sassafras tea once it tastes like root beer

Yeah...stick to what you know works Mike...

Another thing that was more plentiful when I was a kid was blackberries . The birds the bushes attract, attract snakes and a lot of people cut the bushes down because of that

I have no blackberries but...I do have snakes!!!

There is only two kinds of snakes that make me jump........ Live ones and dead ones lol

I hate snakes...it's the only thing I will admit to having a phobia of.....

Oooof curing bacon, that sounds amazing. My boyfriend's mom seasons and dries her own jerky and it's delicious. I'm hoping to try it myself soon.

I like snakes. I understand why you wouldn't, Hellon. It's hard to develop a connection with one, but I like the way they feel; how their muscles flex, ripple, slide, and wind. They're so strange.

We all make jerky here...it's like an okka thing really.

Snakes...
Sorry..I cannot even remotely go there with you Jane...when I had chickens they were in there eating the eggs...they bit my precious dog Bonnie and killed her...this year my other dog Murphy was bitten by a tiger snake...thankfully we saved him on time so..yeah...but,I just have a phobia of them regardless....