Bacon is the basis of most fantastic pieces of food, whether it’s under a fried egg, pancakes, hamburger or with some pasta, it’s always good! Even without anything else, it still rules! Anybody who disagrees with me, please PM, haha!

But how to improve the quality of the bacon in your fridge? Well …. what about doing it yourself? It’s super simple and very tasteful!

First of all, you might need the porkbelly bacon …. of course….

Some nitrite salt or in my case colorozo salt.

Sugar…. and that’s it.

Per kg bacon, you take exactly 50gr of colorozo salt (or 45gr of seasalt + 5gr of nitrite salt) and

22,5gr of fine sugar.

Mix the salt and sugar well and apply this to the piece of bacon, before putting it in a ziplock bag.

Once in the ziplock, place it in the fridge and turn it around every 24 hours for about a week.

After this period, all gross and scary things living and growing inside the bacon will be killed while the salt impregnates the bacon and makes sure that it stays beautifully red and not grey after smoking it.

Afer about 6-7 days of turning it, remove it from the fridge and rinse of the salt with some fresh water. Dry the piece of bacon well with some paper towels or a cloth. Put it back in the fridge for 24 hours more. This is to create a good layer on the outside of the meat where the smoke will stick too, to create more flavour in the meat.

So …. grilling time! Lite up the Q (or the WSM in my case) and wait until the temperature is settled at around 107 degrees celcius (225 F). Now I’ve placed the bacon on the top grill and stuck a food probe in there. I’ve also added some woodchuncks (apple) to the coals. Now, close the lid and don’t look again, until it’s finished, because you all might know, “If you’re looking, you ain’t cooking!”.

Core temperature should be around 65 degrees celcius (150 F). Once that’s achieved, remove the bacon. I’ve wrapped it in aluminium foil for some time after removing the piece of skin that was still attached. My advise would be to do that at the end, and not at the beginning of this session, as it’s much easier to remove once the fat is soft and warm, instead of cold and hard, of course.

All that’s left is cutting it up. I’ve cut some thicker slices and some chunks for cubes and placed it in the freezer. Now I can’t wait for something I can use it for. I might have to make up something myself soon!