Two weeks ago, we and some friends of of ours butchered and processed 5 pigs. At that time, we made sausage, polish sausage, brats, and packaged pork chops and rib and ground pork. We brought home the side meat and the ham to cure and smoke.
Bacon is made by taking the side meat and rubbing it with salt and brown sugar. Then, it's put somewhere cool--between the temperatures of 35 and 45 degrees--to cure. The salt and sugar are absorbed into the meat and some of the liquid drains off. After curing for 2 weeks, we smoked it for a couple of hours.
This is what you get... In this photo, you see the side meat from 2 pigs. Probably 40 lbs of "bacon".
After it's smoked, we put it in the freezer for it to firm up making it easier for us to slice. In the above picture, you can see a slab that we'd cut a few slices from. Doesn't that look good?
Here's a shot of Kev slicing the bacon. Isn't he cute? I think so :)
Yum...lots and lots of bacon...From this point, we wrapped it up in freezer paper and some we vacuum sealed. We wound up with 35 packages of bacon. I can assure you that the bacon tastes wonderful...but you'll just have to take my word for it.
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