Smoked Bacon: Step By Step Guide To Homemade Bacon - Crave The Good (2024)

Once you make your own bacon, you’ll never go back. This easy recipe will walk you through exactly how to make smoked bacon at home!

Sometimes I think I have too much thinking time. I come up with whacky ideas, and off the wall projects.

Other times, I think I’m a foodie genius.

I bet you can guess which way this stroke of smoked bacon inspiration went.

This home smoked bacon recipe is dedicated to makin’ bacon.

Tips + Tricks

No. 1 –> Making your own bacon is not a hard process but there are a few steps involved, please read through this entire blog post at least once before starting. There’s a printable recipe card at the bottom of the post.

No. 2 –> I’ve written pretty exact directions, including little tips and tricks I’ve picked up through the process of making this bacon many many times, in the body of this post, and I’ll leave another more concise set of directions in the printable recipe card.

No. 3 –> Freeze your belly slightly before slicing. We’ve found that especially with the electric slicer it’s nice to have that fat solidified a bit before we start cutting cause it can lead to a gooey mess.

No. 4 –> Cook your bacon the RIGHT way. Check out my How To: Cook Bacon Guide!

Ingredients

All ingredients in this recipe are subject to the size of your pork belly. You will need to calculate them each time you make bacon, but these are the ingredients you need on hand:

• skin-off pork belly
• kosher salt
• brown sugar
• #1 Prague Powder

This recipe has a few little tools that make it much easier to complete. Here’s a list of the things I use when making home smoked bacon:

• parchment paper or wax paper
• gallon ziplock bags
• sticky notes
• pen
• food scale that measures in grams
• 3 small mixing bowls
• cookie sheet or chafing pan
• Traeger or other smoker
• meat slicer
• vacuum sealer

How To Make Homemade Bacon

Get Ready:

1. Gather your equipment: Tear 3 decent sized sheets of wax or parchment paper, get a decent food scale, a pen, some sticky notes, 3 1-gallon ziplock bags and 3 small mixing bowls.
2. Slice the pork belly into smaller slabs to fit in your brining bag. I like to cut mine into thirds, as they generally fit perfectly in a 1-gallon ziplock bag. Place each slab on a sheet of parchment paper.

Weigh It:

1. One at a time, pick up the cut pork belly and place it on the scale. Measure in grams. Write the weight on the top of your sticky note.
2. Calculate your dry brine: For every 454g of pork belly, you need 10 g coarse kosher salt, 5 g brown sugar, and 1 g curing salt. If the math stresses you out, use this use this awesome web-based calculator and select the following options; US curing standards, Skin Off. Then I use the measurements listed for salt, sugar and the minimum amount of nitrates. Write these numbers on your sticky note. Place each one beside the corresponding slab.

Brine:

1. Make the dry brine. Place your small bowl on the scale and tare it out. Measure the specified amount of salt, then tare, add the sugar, tare, and then the nitrate salt. Mix this together thoroughly. Do this with all slabs of bacon, being sure to keep each brine mix with the correct slab.
2. Sprinkle the brine mix on the corresponding pork belly, making sure to get both sides, and the edges. Pat it in. Return the belly to the wax paper.

Bag + Chill:

1. Fold the wax paper on top of the belly and slide it into your large ziplock bag. Squeeze the air out of the bag, and place on a cookie sheet (I like to use my chafing pan), to contain any possible drips and place in the fridge for 7 days.
2. Flip the bags every day for 7 days, give them a quick massage.
3. Wash the pork belly. On the 7th day, open the ziplock bags and remove the slab. Run it under cold water and rinse it well.
4. Place the washed belly onto a wire cooling rack and set it on top of a cookie sheet. Place the belly back into the fridge uncovered overnight.

Smoke it:

1. Preheat the smoker to 180f. Remove your bacon from the fridge and smoke it until it reaches an internal temperature of 145-150f.
2. Remove the bacon from the smoker and allow it to come to room temperature before proceeding.
3. Freeze the bacon slabs for at least 1 hour before attempting to slice with a meat slicer, or a good brisket knife and a steady hand.
4. Vacuum pack the bacon in portion sizes that work for your family, and store in the freezer until ready to use, 3-4 months, if it lasts that long!

How to store

We store all our bacon sliced and vacuum-sealed in the freezer. I say it lasts 3-4 months, but to be honest, I don’t think we’ve ever had homemade bacon last that long in this house. According to the Food Safety And Inspection Services website, 3-4 months is bang on!

Once opened and in the fridge, cook your bacon within 4-5 days.

Picking A Pork Belly

This recipe really hinges a lot on the pork belly, so it’s important to pick the best one you can.

Try to find a pork belly that is roughly 1/2 pink meat and 1/2 creamy white fat. Let’s be real, the fat is the decadent part of the bacon, so make sure there’s a good amount of fat.

We have had excellent luck procuring skinless pork bellies at Costco, as an added bonus, they are cryvac’d so they are perfect for freezing until we’re ready to get to bacon makin’! Can you tell we live in the boonies and a stock up trip to Costco is a real treat? Haha

If you don’t have a local Costco, check in with your butcher. Our butcher has always been able to supply us with trimmed pork belly whenever we’ve needed it.

What if my belly has wonky ends?

Don’t worry! The one I’ve photographed for this recipe has some wonky edges, some places where it won’t slice super well, or be worth bacon. You know what you do with those? Chop them into lardon, or leave them larger and use as bacon ends.

If you’ve never cooked with bacon ends before , you’ll love this! Chop them and use them in potato bacon soup, fry them up for bacon bits in your salad, or mashed potatoes. Grind them up to use them in your cabbage rolls, or perogies.

The list of uses for bacon ends is endless and I often run out of bacon ends before I run out of bacon!

What pellets to use?

Kevy and I are huge Lumberjack Pellet fans, we buy them in bulk, and go through them in bulk. We’ve used a few different pellets to smoke bacon; applewood, cherry, and most recently the competition blend which is 1/3 maple, 1/3 hickory, and 1/3 cherry. Each one has been fantastic.

I guess, what I’m saying is that bacon is so perfect, I don’t think any pellets could take it off the bacon pedestal, though, I’d probably avoid mesquite and straight hickory as they may impart too strong a flavour.

I talk about our Timberline 1300 probably daily. It’s embarrassing how much I of my day is spent thinking about, talking about, using our smoker. *shoulder shrug* What can I say, I’m a changed woman. Show me the smoke!

Truly, we love our Timberline, it’s double-walled for insulation and can easily handle Alberta winters, has 3 stainless steel racks for all your large batch smoking (*ahem, bacon), not to mention WiFire – which I thought was dorky, but actually rules! You can get a Timberline from Traeger.

Other smoked recipes you’ll love

If you love bacon…

You’ve gotta try my smoked beef bacon. OMG! The process is so similar, and yet the results, are very different!

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