Making Bacon/Pork belly

[toomuchsun]

I thought I was done considering this troublesome adventure but the works of art I am seeing here talked me right out of abandonment. Gotta learn and do it! Awesome shares and making me Hongry.

[tpack]

My pork belly is still in the cure. I’ll be smoking it tomorrow but in the meantime I saved the skin and made Cracklins today. WOW! These are fantastic. I’ll never feed the skin to my dogs ever again.
Dust them with a combination of Raging Blaze and Serendipity.
Mighty good eats.

Exactly how did you go about cooking them? Don`t leave us hanging.

[Travis Deveney]

looks good

[bowhunt3]

Wow, bacon's looks delicious.

[Geezy Rider]

Exactly how did you go about cooking them? Don`t leave us hanging.

After slicing the skin off of the pork belly there was some fat and meat still attached so I sliced it up into 1”x 1”, give or take, squares.

Heated some peanut oil to 250° and slowly put all the squares into the oil.

Stir them quite often to keep them from sticking together.

Cook until they are a tan color. This may take an hour to cook.

Remove from the oil and put on a wire rack to cool.

Raise the heat on the oil to 400°.

In smaller batches add the once fried cracklins back to the pot for the second fry.

They will now “pop” and expand. Fry until golden brown.

Remove from oil and place on a wire rack to drain.

Dust with you’re favorite cajun seasoning. (Ragin Blaze for me)

Just a couple of observations, if the heat is too high the cracklins will get too brown too fast and some of them can end up a little chewy and taste slightly overdone. The darker ones in my picture are an example of a little over done.
I let my heat get up to 475° and they cooked too fast. The first batch done at 400° were better.
Also, it’s a good idea to pull one out of the fryer and taste test it to be sure it’s at the right crunch.

[Geezy Rider]

This bacon is fantastic. I made the maple version. I will be trying other types in the near future. Plain, jalapeño, pepper, asian etc.

This is easy and so much better than store bought it looks like I’ll be making my own for now on.

Sunday morning cooking on the flattop.

[ShoootLow]

My pork belly is still in the cure. I’ll be smoking it tomorrow but in the meantime I saved the skin and made Cracklins today. WOW! These are fantastic. I’ll never feed the skin to my dogs ever again.
Dust them with a combination of Raging Blaze and Serendipity.
Mighty good eats.

If still in the cure you may want to consider the time required to rinse, soak if necessary, and let it rest/dry to form a pellicle. Skipping this step will cost you flavor and bacon may be too salty. Just my .02, and Th one skins look awesome!

[Gee]

Looks great!

[chicken fried]

All of it looks awesome. My Rectec will be at the house Tuesday and should be ready smoke by the weekend.

[ren087]

My attempt:

[JES]

It's so easy to do and so dang tasty.

[mfarmer]

Did you slice up the belly into the smoking size pieces before curing? Asking because in that link it says not to but be hard to cure a 12lb whole belly in a bag. Going to try this soon.

[scotty]

I can't seem to find a slicer that will cut the bacon in the long strips we are use to. I have tried two different ones, an LEM, and the Academy store brand with the same results, I can only slice them on the short side. I have just been using my boning knife.

I bought this one off Amazon.
It’s not cheap though.

[Stick bow]

Bacon makes everything better good job on the first time

[Geezy Rider]

Did you slice up the belly into the smoking size pieces before curing? Asking because in that link it says not to but be hard to cure a 12lb whole belly in a bag. Going to try this soon.

Yes. I cut up my pork belly into slabs small enough to fit two each into a one gallon zip lock bag.