I may have mentioned that our butcher is no longer smoking meat.  His uncle retired so we were given unsmoked and frozen pork belly and leg roasts.  We have a small smoker but hadn’t used it to make bacon or ham.

So we thawed half of one pork belly.

We cut into ~1 pound pieces.  And we chose this recipe to make bacon.  Here is the pork belly pieces curing with Prague Powder #1, coarse Kosher salt, brown sugar, maple syrup (from our trees), cracked black pepper and crushed red pepper flakes.  This lasted one week.

Tom then developed a pellicle. He removed the bacon from the bags, rinsed the pork belly, placed it on a wire rack above a baking sheet, patted the pork belly dry with paper towels, and then seasoned the top with the tablespoon of fresh cracked black pepper. He placed the peppered bacon in the fridge and left it uncovered for 18 hours

Then he prepared our smoker this morning. He preheated our smoker to 160 degrees F using our apple wood.

He smoked it for 5 hours when it reached 155 degrees.

Here is it right out of the smoker.  Tom showed it to me as I was enjoying the “red” carpet before the Oscars post-call.

And here’s my dinner.

And that is the best bacon I have ever had.