At last year’s show, I bought some beef belly/navel from Antelope Creek Wagyu Ranch, knowing full well I was going to make bacon with it. This Christmas beef bacon was just one very tasty result of this project. It’s like a Christmas-flavored smoky steak, only bacon!
Ingredients
- 3-5 lbs Beef belly/navel slab
- 1/4 cup packed brown sugar
- 3 tbsp coarse, kosher salt
- 2 tsp Morton’s tender quick or pink curing salt
- 3 tbsp ground cinnamon
- 3 tbsp ground nutmeg
- 3 tbsp ground ginger
Servings: Lbs
Instructions
- Trim the slap of excess fat
- Combine the other ingredients in a bowl.
- Place the slab in a shallow pan. Rub the cure mixture into every surface of the meat, coating it completely.
- Place the slab into either a ziplock bag just big enough to hold it or vacuum seal it in a vacu-seal bag (that works best).
- Put the sealed bag in your refrigerator, making sure that it lies flat.
- Flip the the bag every day for four or five days. The cure will draw liquid from the meat forming a brine.
- Rinse the cure from the meat, thoroughly. Pat the slab dry with a paper towel, then put it back in the refrigerator on a wire rack. Let it sit overnight. The meat’s surface will get tacky, which helps the smoke stick to it during smoking.
- Preheat your smoker to 225F. Smoke the bacon for 2-3 hours over indirect heat (you’re not trying to cook it through, just impart smoke).
- Let the smoked bacon cool off and then freeze or refrigerate it for several hours before slicing. You really should have a good deli-style meat slicer for cutting.
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Managing Editor | Mark is a freelance journalist based out of Los Angeles. He’s our Do-It-Yourself specialist, and happily agrees to try pretty much every twisted project we come up with.
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