Pera ni Juan

Homemade bacon is a staple food on your breakfast table. Bacon goes along with fried egg and fried rice. If you prefer sandwhich, you can insert bacon in any kind of sandwhich that you like. Bacon is also good in Hamburger (ever heard of the bacon mushroom-melt burger). Kids crave for bacon and they can eat bacon all day to breakfast until dinner.

Bacon comes from pigs and they get bacon from the pig's belly (liempo). If you know how to make bacon you can make it into a sideline business by selling it to your neighbors and office mates.

Here are some list of Homemade Bacon Recipes

Homemade Bacon
by John D Lee

Ingredients:
One 5 lb. slab of pork belly, rind removed. Ask your butcher to take of the rind.
1/4 cup of salt
1 tsp pink salt, a mixture of about 93.5% regular salt (kosher salt is good as it has no iodine) and 6.5% Sodium Nitrite.
Generous half cup of maple syrup or honey. (You could also substitute a half cup of brown sugar if you prefer.)

Procedure:
Rub the pink salt all over both sides of the bacon and then slather on the salt and maple syrup or honey as well, trying to get all exposed surfaces coated. Pop the pork belly into a large Ziploc bag, and keep it in the fridge for a week, turning every day. There will be some liquid accumulating in the bag; this is normal, don’t remove it.

After a week, take the bacon out of the bag, wash off any salt that remains…and voila, you have bacon.

Now fry a little piece cut out from the center of the belly. It’s bacon after all, so it should be salty; but if you think it is too salty, try soaking it in cold water for about an hour. This will leach out some of the salt. Repeat the tasting and if you still think it’s too salty, give it another hour in a new batch of water.

You now have great tasting bacon that’s ready to enjoy; and you can either now slice it up and watch how fast it disappears from your fridge, or get ready to take it the next level by hardwood smoking it.

The smoking stage will make this bacon even better, but you’ll be amazed at how good the bacon already tastes. All the excess water has been removed through the dry curing; so the tastes are concentrated…and you’ll never see your homemade bacon shrivel away to nothing in the frying pan.

Commercial bacon is pumped full of water, and when you cook it, all this water is released. Adding water is a great way to make more money when you’re selling bacon by the pound, but not such a good way to make delicious bacon. Recipe found at Hubpages.com

Natural Homemade Bacon
by Geoff

Ingredients:
5 pounds pork belly
Quarter cup Kosher salt
Flavorings: 1/2 cup of maple pure syrup or some molasses and mustard powder
a few sprigs of fresh rosemary and black peppercorns and crushed garlic

Procedure:
Step 1: Thoroughly rinse and dry and then place your pork belly in a non-metal container large enough to accommodate it.

Step 2: Apply salt to both sides of the belly and rub it in. Kosher salt works perfectly for this, as the grains of a traditional table salt are too fine, while those in sea salt are too coarse.

Step 3: Now is also a good time to contemplate flavorings. Like maple flavored bacon? Lightly rub a half cup of pure maple syrup (you know, syrup that has only “pure maple syrup” as an ingredient, not that stuff sold in plastic containers) on to the belly. This is a really good time to be creative. Some molasses and mustard powder, perhaps? A more savory bacon can be made by adding a few sprigs of fresh rosemary and black peppercorns and crushed garlic to the mix. Play around a little. Developing your own cures for specific purposes can be a lot of fun.

Step 4: Stash the container in your fridge. 24 hours later, pull them out. Poke the belly. It should be a little firmer than when you put it in. Liquid will continue to be pulled out of the meat, which will cause the belly to become continually firmer throughout the process. Drain and discard the liquid and lightly dust the belly in additional salt (a couple of pinches should do the trick) and back in the fridge it goes.

Step 5: Repeat this process so that your meat is cured at least three days. You can cure your meat pretty much as long as you’d like, just remember that you are increasing the level of salt and reducing the level of moisture each day. I’ve found that about 5 days is my ideal curing time. Your preference may vary, so experiment a little. Once your cure is complete, remove the belly from the container and rinse completely.

Step 6: Smoke the bacon with hickory or walnut wood at 200 degrees until the internal temperature of the meat reaches 150. (This usually takes about 3 hours, your results may vary.)

If you don’t have access to a smoker, you can certainly rig one up with a ceramic pot and a hot plate, a la Alton Brown (About the 7 minute mark of this video) or you can cook the bacon in your oven. I would suggest braising it in a foil pouch in the presence of a cup or so of liquid in a 200 degree oven until the bacon reaches the desired temperature of 150. The addition of liquid smoke to the braising liquid will give the bacon a similar smoky flavor, but it won’t be close to the results you can achieve in a smoker.

Step 7: Once your bacon has cooled, it’s time to slice. A night in the fridge will firm the belly up, making it much easier to slice. If you don’t have a counter-top slicer hanging around, just take your sharpest knife and slice as thin or thickly as you’d like. Recipe found at imafoodblog.com

How to Make Bacon
By Mishell Malabaguio

Materials Needed:
* Gas stove
* Casserole
* Oven
* Bowls
* 30ml syringe
* 21G x 1″ needle
* Knife
* Cotton thread or ham net
* Paperlyne or cut wrap for curing and packaging

Ingredients:
* 1kg of liempo or pork belly

for PUMPING PICKLE: (good for 10 kg of meat)
* ½ cup & 2 tablespoons salt
* 5 cups water
* 6 ½ tablespoons white sugar
* 3 tablespoons phosphate
* 1 teaspoon curing salt
* 1 ½ teaspoons powdered ascorbic acid
* 1 drop oil of anise
* 1 drop oil of cloves
* 1 drop maplein
* 1 ½ teaspoons smoke flavor

for DRY CURE (good for every 1 kg of meat)
* 1 ½ tablespoons salt, P15 per kg
* 2 ½ tablespoons sugar
* 1/4 tablespoons phosphate

Procedure:
1. Dissolve the salt into the water and then dissolve the following ingredients: phosphate, sugar, curing salt, ascorbic acid, oil of anise, oil of cloves, maplein, and smoke flavor.

2. Once dissolved, get ½ cup of the pickle and put it in the syringe. Make sure there is no air inside the syringe.

3. Get the liempo and inject the pickle into the lean portion of the meat in several points 1/2 inch apart. After each injection, slightly massage the meat to evenly distribute the pumping pickle in the meat. Set aside.

4. Mix the ingredients for the dry cure. Get the meat and rub the dry cure on the meat, starting from its fatty portion all the way to the lean portion. Afterwards, wrap with paperlyne or cut wrap.

5. Cure the pork for 8 to 10 hours at room temperature and then 5 days inside the refrigerator. After curing, wash the meat thoroughly with running water for 30 minutes to make sure that all excess curing ingredients are removed. Then drain the meat.

6. Roll the meat and then tie it tightly with the cotton thread. You may also use a ham net. After tying the bacon, freeze it.

7. Once the bacon has been frozen, slice it thinly. You may now pack and sell it. Recipe found at Entrepreneur.com.ph

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