I have a whole mess of pork bellies that need attention. Maybe this week.
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11 pound pork butt, the center was still a little frozen when I went to trim it yesterday. so I cut it in half. Figure it'll cook more evenly this was as well.
This is my first smoke using oak firewood as the fuel. Temps are holding pretty good, but I'm using up more wood than I expected.
Got my ribs going right now with applewood smoke and apple juice in the water bowl. My bag of pecan chips got lost in the move somehow. I was going to do the pork bellies I picked up until I reread the recipe at the cure takes 7 days so those are still in their vac pack waiting their turn.
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As my wood pile started getting low, I decided to use some of the lump charcoal as well. I'll start with that approach next time. And I'll make sure to buy more wood.... Gone thru about 20 pounds of oak firewood. Luckily that only cost me a few bucks, so I don't mind using it, just going to need a bigger stack to make it thru the winter.
The pork butt, hit the stall around 155 or so. Usually I foil wrap pork butt, but thinking of trying paper wrapped this time...
Bacon before going into the smoker, first one is pepper bacon, second one is sweet, maple and brown sugar:
After 3 hours on the smoker, still another hour or so left to go:
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Last edited by DenverGP; 08-30-2015 at 15:09.
Those pork bellies look great.I'm looking at hickory for mine once I get to them, but also looking at maple wood as well, especially for the sweet ones since they use maple syrup in the recipe.
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My maple syrup/brown sugar one didn't come out very sweet. Think I need to research some more recipes for sweet bacon. After curing for the week, we rinsed both of them off well, dried them, and added some cracked pepper to the pepper/spicy one. Didn't put anything on the sweet one, and yet it ended up VERY sticky on the outside. I was really surprised, didn't think the sugar would absorb into the meat that much. But I think the salt overpowered the sweet flavors. Still tastes like awesome bacon, so I'm not going to complain.
After they cooled down to room temp, we cut off a couple test slices off each, then wrapped the remaining slabs in plastic wrap and let them rest overnight before slicing up the rest.