So, does bacon really make everything better?
Hellthefuckyeah.
I’d thought I’d be updating the makin’ bacon experiment earlier, but it takes a surprising amount of time to cure, cook, and eat four pounds of bacon unless you’re doing nothing else with your life.
This is what happened.
I brought the big slab of pork belly home and un-rolled it carpet-like and stared at it. Then I cut that big slab of pork belly into thirds. And stared at it some more. Then I cut the thirds in half and figured maybe I was onto something. I wrapped four of the pieces for the freezer and considered the other two double pounders.
First I had to cut the skin off. Pigs have a really tough, really thick skin that you don’t want as a part your bacon experience. I think the skin’s good for either pork cracklins’ or making your trash smelly.
I chose smelly trash.
Using a fish filet knife I urged the thick skin off of our slabs of bacon and by the time I was done, Miss Carol had the curing spices ready and we coated them and settled them into gallon-size zip-lock bags and put them in the refrigerator and high-fived each other.
We were makin’ bacon, baby.
We flipped the slabs daily to spread the curing and waited impatiently. I decided to name them Test Slab 1A and Test Slab 1B and Miss Carol rolled her eyes.
After a week I decided Test Slab 1A was ready so I pulled it out and rinsed it off. I thought the flecks of pepper looked cool and tasteful and left them. Big mistake. By not rinsing off all the pepper I also didn’t rinse off all the curing salt.
Oh my.
The bacon was very, very, very, very, very salty. Think a Virginia country ham kind of salty. Or, if you’ve never had a Virginia country ham, just imagine very, very, very, very, very salty. It was salty. And yet good. ‘Cause me made it and it was freshyfresh. But very salty.
Test Slab 1B was better. Miss Carol elbowed me aside and rinsed it thoroughly and we cut it thickly and grilled it and even though the coals were too hot and we kinda burned it, it was still fucking awesome. The meat was fresher and saltier than any other bacon we’d ever eaten and the fat was incredibly juicy.
So what’s next?
Test Slabs 2A and 2B are currently curing using more brown sugar to maybe cut the salt level and our dehydration down a notch now that we’re committed to the experiment.
We will rock this.
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