This simple homesteading smoking bacon curing brine recipe will help bring out the delicious flavor from a slab of pork belly. As homesteaders, we have been eating meat for centuries now. We love it.

It doesn’t matter if it comes from pig, cow, deer, or poultry, if we can smoke it, we will. There is just something about smoking meat that helps to bring out a different flavor entirely and you can up your game in the cooking department when you show off a new technique. Besides making you look like a five star chef, smoking meat has many other benefits to it that should make you want to run out and buy a smoker, grab some ribs, and get to it.

One on the biggest benefits to smoking meat is that it helps to kill off any bacteria that is in or on the meat, thus making it last longer. If you are looking to have meat that you can keep around for awhile, perhaps for a camping trip or something of that nature, smoking any kind of meat in preparation give you a lot of meals that will last a while and not go bad.

Smoking meats also is a healthy choice for your own meals at home. Meat that is generally a little leaner such as; poultry, venison, buffalo, or fish generally develop more flavor and they have a small amount of fat anyway, thus, making them healthier than say, pork or beef. But even wit those two animals, when you smoke them, some of the fat will drip off in the cooking process which will help to make them ultimately leaner than they would have been before.

Another great benefit to smoking meat is that it can help to increase the flavor, and it helps to keep the fat from developing a bad or rancid taste. This is great because since the meat will last longer, the flavor will last just as long, and the fat that it is in the meat will not go bad and ruin the meat in the long run.

Smoking meat is a great way of changing up your regular cooking repertoire when it comes to cooking meat. It may be a time consuming process, but in the end you are left with a beautiful looking and a wonderful tasting piece of meat. It lasts longer in storage and you are able to pull it out later to eat with no change in flavor or the safety of the product. If you are not a meat smoker now, you out to be after knowing all the benefits you get from it.

Real Simple Curing Brine Recipe:

For every 1 gallon of water add:

1/3 – 1 cup sea salt (depending if you’re on a lo-salt diet)

1 cup granulated sugar or Splenda®

1 cup brown sugar or Splenda® brown sugar mix

1 tbsp cure no. 1 pink salt

stir thoroughly until clear amber color, pour over meat, inject if necessary to cure from inside-out as well as outside-in

weight down with a partially filled 1 qt or 1 gal. ziplock bag or bags to keep meat immersed

Curing times vary with meat, but generally overnight to 2-3 days for chickens and turkeys, 8-10 days buckboard bacon, 10-14 days belly bacon, pork shoulder, whole butts, 3-4 weeks whole hams, 10-20 days corned beef (fresh beef roasts, briskets, rolled rib roasts, etc.) If whole muscle is more than 2″ thick, then inject so it can cure i/o as well as o/i, and/or in and around bone structures, etc.

You can add any other flavorings you’d like, this is just the basic curing brine. 1 heaping tablespoon of cure is about 1 ounce. The maximum concentration allowed safely is 3.84 ounces per 1 gallon of brine (24 lbs.per 100 gallons: 16 oz. x 24 = 384 ounces, 1/100th is 3.84 ounces). You can experiment with different concentrations as long as you keep it between those parameters.

add pepper,onion, garlic, old bay.

My buddy Raptor and I split a 4 pork bellies case a few weeks ago.

Cut them up and put them in a bucket with the cure mix…then into the spare fridge for 15 days.

No specific reason for 15 days..it just worked out that way.

Rinsed and put back in the fridge with a generous coating of pepper onion and garlic on half. Added a thick coat of Slap Yer Mama on the other half.

2 days later they got 34 hours of pecan dust smoke using 2 amazens.

Sliced off the skins with ease using my Grandpas steel filet knife.. Skin side down cutting like skinning fish.

Back into the fridge for a couple days.

Used my awesome Berkel commercial slicer and had 22 pounds sliced and 2 pounds of ends in no time.

Vac packed using Lisa Bs superb bags.

Try it you will like it..

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