Long ago, long before the silly bacon and everything Fad got started, people actually made bacon at home. It's not that hard to do, and it can produce some superior quality bacon. Making bacon at home isn't going to save you a lot of money, and it's probably not going to make anything any more healthy than what you get in the store, but it will be delicious. This video is going to show you how to cure a pork belly and then how to smoke it so that you have slab bacon. You're not going to learn how to use a smoker, and I'm not going to show how to make uncured or naturally cured bacon. There are two special ingredients you'll need. The first is pork belly. I'm using a three pound slab that still has the skin attached. If you have trouble finding this, try asking a butcher, maybe a pork producer to farmer's market, or go to an Asian grocery store that has a good meat department. As with anything, the better the quality, the better your bacon will be. The second special ingredient is curing salt, which is often referred to as pink salt. It's sold under a few different names. I was able to find pouches of it at the Bass Pro Shop, but it can be ordered online. Check the links in the notes. No matter which brand you have, it's going to be the same makeup. 93.75% salt and 6.25% sodium nitrite. I could make an entire video discussing the pros and cons of sodium nitrite, but the reason why it's put in this is because it kills the bacteria that can cause botulism. Then it also preserves that nice pink color, and it gives it a flavor and texture that you just can't get without using some sort of curing agent. Although the amount that actually goes into this recipe isn't much to be concerned about, there are some things you should know about the ingredient. First of all, that sodium nitrite part is toxic, and too much at once can be fatal. It's a powerful antioxidant. Frequent consumption of cured meats can lead to long-term health problems, and it should be stored at a reach of children. I know this sounds like something you probably don't want to eat or even have in the house, but if we think about the facts that I gave about this product, they are eerily similar to another product that you might be familiar with. Beer! If you're not convinced that's fine, but please don't try this recipe without the pink salt. You'd have to cold smoke it, and I have no advice on how to do that. Stick to something you could get in a store. This uncured bacon from Trader Joe's is excellent. The recipe I'm going to show is inspired by the one in this book, which is a great resource if you're interested in learning how to make sausages or a variety of other old-world meat preservation techniques. To cure this three-pound slab of pork belly, I'm using 40 grams of kosher salt. I use diamond crystal kosher salt, so 40 grams is about five tablespoons. If you use Morton's kosher salt, you'll want to make it three tablespoons. Next is one and a half teaspoons of pink salt, and then 40 grams of maple sugar. If you can't find maple sugar, brown sugar is fine. 40 grams would be about three tablespoons. Beyond the salts and the sugar are where you add some extra flavor to the bacon. For this recipe, I'm using five cloves of garlic and four whole jalapenos. It's quite a bit to give any extra flavor to the bacon. The recipe in the book calls for I think a quarter cup of maple syrup, which is pretty good for breakfast bacon. You could also use black pepper or any herbs that you like. Basically it's up to you. The pork belly goes in a gallon-sized zipper bag, and the cure mixture will be added to that, and it's good to really rub the mixture into both sides of the pork belly. Then the air needs to be squeezed out of the bag, and this will go into the refrigerator's skin side down. The bag will need to get flipped every other day, and I'm starting on a Saturday, so it'll need to be flipped on. After seven days, the belly should have firmed up quite a bit, and it's ready to come out of the cure. The seasoning should be rinsed off the surface, and this also takes care of a lot of the saltiness. It needs to be padded dry, and then put on a rack above a pan. That's going to go into the refrigerator for 12 to 24 hours. This gives the meat enough time to develop a pellicle, which is when the surface gets a little dried out and kind of tacky. That helps the smoke flavor to stick to the meat. And when it comes to smoke, you'll want to go for something relatively mild. Meatwoods are best. Things like hickory are way too strong for bacon. The reason why you see so many apple wood smoked bacon is because apple wood is perfect for smoking bacon. I like to use the chips. Like I said before, I'm not going to teach you how to use a smoker, but it needs to be at 200 degrees Fahrenheit. The pork belly will go in there, skin side down, until it reaches an internal temperature of 150 degrees. Should take about two and a half hours. This is my homemade smoker. It's a little goofy, but it gets the job done. If you don't have a smoker, but you do have a grill, I'd encourage you to look up ways to use it as a smoker. At the very least, you could put the pork belly in there and hit it with a lot of smoke for like 30 minutes or so at a low temperature. Then you can finish the pork belly in a 200 degree oven until it hits 150 degrees. Once the slab has hit the magic temperature, it needs to cool off on the counter for a couple of hours. But after 10 minutes, while it's still warm, you should remove the skin. It should come off pretty easily in one piece, and don't throw this away. It would be really good if it's put into a pot of soup for flavoring. Or it's so salty I'd give it to the dog. After it's cooled completely, you can peel some other things off. Here's some silver skin, and then I also like to trim off the reddish brown bits there. You can leave it on, but it makes the slices a little more rustic than what I want. Also like to trim the ends off, just so it'll be nice and neat on the edges when I start slicing. Before it gets sliced, it should be thoroughly refrigerated or maybe even put into the freezer for a little while to really firm it up. That's going to make the slicing a lot easier. But I don't have a very good slicing knife. I'm just going to use the chef's knife here to do the best that I can. If you only need slicer, this is the perfect time to bust it out. It's kind of hard to make really even thin slices if you're doing it by hand, but actually it's kind of nice to have it a little bit thick. And since this is slab bacon, there's some things you can do with this. You can't do with grocery store bacon. If you cut a nice thick piece like this about a quarter of an inch thick, then you can cut it into what's called lardons, which are perfect to use on salad. Personally, I think the best way to prepare strips of bacon is in the oven, but it's not quite as satisfying as doing it in a frying pan. With this homemade bacon, I like to do it at a really low temperature because I've found that it's a little bit more prone to burning if it's cooked at too high of a temp. So yeah, there's some bacon. Obviously, I'm going to end this video by making you watch me eat my bacon.