Bringing home the bacon...Literally

When I purchased Michael Symon's cookbook a few weeks ago, I was casually flipping through it when something caught my eye.  I stopped, and checked out the recipe and knew that it was something I just had to make.  It was Bacon!  That's right, a recipe for making bacon at home.  Considering I enjoy eating bacon and cooking with bacon, and I purchase it every time I go to the store, it only seemed logical that some day I go ahead and make it myself.  I started looking through the recipe and realizing just how simple it was until I hit a small problem; bacon is lightly cured and then smoked, and unfortunately I didn't have a smoker.  So, I put the idea of making bacon on the back burner until the day I got a smoker.  

Then, a couple of weeks ago I was at Williams-Sonoma spending some of our wedding money when I noticed a little metal box.  Upon closer inspection I realized it was a smoker!  This small box is designed to sit on top of a gas grill with wood chips in the bottom.  As the box heats, it slowly heats the wood chips as well, causing them to char and smoke without actually igniting.  It's a fantastic little contraption that sits right on top of the DeLonghi indoor grill that we received as a gift, and it is just big enough to allow me to smoke something like a half rack of ribs, a couple of salmon filets, or bacon!  I bought it that day, fully intending to make bacon as soon as I had a chance.

The bacon making process is quite simple, but takes a bit of time.  It starts with a piece of pork belly.  Following Michael Symon's recipe, you then add some kosher salt, a bit of pink salt, some paprika, red pepper flakes, brown sugar, honey and cumin.  All of this is spread over the pork belly, and then put in a big bag.  Then for the next week the bag gets flipped daily as the salt pulls out some of the moisture, and the flavors are incorporated into the meat.  After a week, the pork belly is removed from the bag, rinsed, and then put on a rack in the refrigerator to continue drying.  A couple days later you simply smoke it for a couple hours until it is cooked through, and that's it.

When I pulled it out of the smoker, I cut off a small piece to try.  The flavor was pretty strong and pretty smokey, and I was a little nervous that it wasn't going to taste that great.  But, I let it rest on the counter, and then put it in the refrigerator to finish cooling down.  I thought I would wait another day and then put it to the ultimate test; BLTs!  So, tonight after work, I came home and got started on a nice, simple dinner of BLTs and Tomato Soup; not just any tomato soup, but the Michael Symon Spicy Tomato soup that I made a couple weeks ago.  

The soup was easy, it was something that I had made before, and knew that it would be good.  However, I was a little nervous about the BLTs.  I pulled out the bacon and cut off for thick slabs.  The good news was that it definitely looked like bacon.  Then I put it in the frying pan and it sizzled and cooked like bacon, throwing off great smells and lots of grease.  Finally I pulled it off the heat and put it on some paper towels before cutting it up and putting it into the BLTs.  The results were great.  It had a nice smokey bacon flavor, and crisped up nicely.  Plus, I still have more than 2 pounds of bacon that I can cut up however I need it!

This was definitely something that was a new and fun experience, and lends itself to a lot of variation.  I don't think I will mess with the salt mixture, at least at first, but I can try and mess with some of the other ingredients.  Adding more brown sugar or maple syrup to make it sweeter, or maybe some chile powders.  And then smoking it with different woods.  For this one I used cherry, but there is the more traditional Applewood or Hickory as well.  So many different mixtures, so many different woods, and never having to buy my own bacon any more!