tandu

I bought 2 lbs of pork side, presliced. I cured it for 7 days in salt. Then I smoked it for 4 hours with hickory chips.

It's delicious. It's bacon. Rather fatty, half-way precooked bacon, but bacon.

Pictures:





The first bite gives you flavors of... SALT! Then more salt. Then some salt. Then yummy bacon grease and smoke. Then salt.

Lessons learned:

1) I need a cold smoker. The one I have is too hot. I think I'll build a ceramic one, and use this one as the cold box. I'll pipe the smoke out of the ceramic smoker into the garbage can one. Then I can smoke cheese, too.

2) Pork Belly. Need real unsliced pork belly for the curing, to cut down on the OMG SALT experience.

3) Smoke: I have to keep a closer eye on it. It took 15 min to go through the first set of chips. I soaked the second set of chips, and they lasted a lot longer, but took more time to work up some smoke.