Hand Cured Apple & Almond Wood Smoked Bacon

I'm in a love affair with cured and or smoked meats and sausages.  Of these culinary delights, I am especially smitten with cured smoked bacon.  As a Matter of fact, I love it so much that I've decided to never purchase it again.  I will never buy it again because I've learned how to make my own.  

Perhaps the biggest challenge I ran up against in my attempts to make bacon was finding a reliable source for fresh, free range pork belly.  You can use any pork belly but free range pork has such amazing flavor.  Luckily I found a little market a stone's throw from where I live which sells whole pigs.  This means that they also sell every part of said pig.  The shop employs masterful butchers who deftly break down the whole beast to extract whichever part you're interested in.  

The picture above shows a pork belly which I portioned, cured and smoked.  It has not been cut yet in to the traditional strips of bacon which Americans have come to know and love.  I have my own in house butcher for that.  Below, please find my recipe for and instructions for making your own bacon which will trump any you can find at the market.

5 pounds of pork belly, skin on

The cure

2 ounces (50 grams) of kosher salt (about ¼ cup)

2 teaspoons (12 grams) pink salt

¼ cup (50 grams) maple sugar or packed dark brown sugar

¼ cup (60 milliliters) maple syrup

Mix the dry cure ingredients together, then add syrup. Rub the mixture over the meat and put it skin side down in a plastic bag slightly bigger than the meat and put it in the refrigerator for a week. Turn it over every day. Remove the meat from the bag and rinse clean, then pat dry. Put it back into the refrigerator on a rack over a baking sheet and let it dry for 12 to 24 hours. Smoke until it reaches an internal temperature of 150 degrees. Remove the skin while the meat is hot. (Discard skin, or cut into pieces and save for other uses.) Let the bacon cool, then wrap in plastic and refrigerate or freeze until ready to use.