Curing bacon: Day 8

Previous post: Curing bacon: Day 6

Yesterday, the pork was turned and had more of the salt/sugar mix applied again. Today, it had sat long enough and it was time to smoke it.

The first step was to wash off the sugar. The idea is that the sugar coating, if left on the pork, would cause it to go off sooner. That, and it probably would not taste as nice. So both pieces of pork were washed in a bucket of warm water and scrubbed to remove the sugar. Then they were hung outside to drip dry, so that they wouldn't drip inside the garage when they were hung there.



After having hung outside for around ten minutes, they were brought inside and hung in front of a large fan to be blown dry. The smaller piece turned in the wind, but the larger piece didn't and had to be hand turned after several hours. After several more hours, they were left to hang with the fan turned off overnight.



The next morning, being dry, they were ready to be taken down.



They were both then hung in the smoker and left for several hours.



After which, they were done.



And stored away in the fridge to sit for a few days, before being tried.