Home made bacon

OK, maybe not home made, since I made them in a professional butcher kitchen, but I made it, and I'm surprised at how simple it is, and how much better it is than the stuff you get at the store, pre-sliced.
I started with an equal mix of brown sugar and sugar, rubbed it into the pork belly, bagged it, and let it sit in the walk-in for 48 hours. It would normally have needed to be turned after the first 24 but it was buried so deep in the cure that it wasn't necessary in this instance.
After 48 hours, I pulled it out of the cure, washed it off, and cold smoked it for about two and a half hours over alder wood chips.
It needed to sit in the reach in for another 24 hours just so that it would firm up enough to slice. I sliced it up this morning and baked it off in the oven (bacon is better when baked, rather than fried - it keeps its shape better, and doesn't sit in its own grease) - man, it was good. A little salty, so I'd probably adjust the cure next time, using a little more brown sugar than salt, but if I put the bacon into something, say, a BLT, it would be fantastic.

The real advantage of doing this yourself is that you get a much better piece of meat. Leaner, more toothsome, and you can pick how thick you cut it. Granted, most people don't have a cold smoker at home, but you can work around that. Alton Brown, on his show Good Eats (the best thing on the Food Network) makes a cold smoker for Salmon out of a hot plate, a cardboard box, a few wooden dowels, and spare parts from a grill.



This seems easy enough to adapt to smoking anything. Or you could just go get a smoker, which would let you do all sorts of good things. I'm putting one on my Christmas list.