Apple Peppered Deckle Bacon

There once lived a Prince with a ravenous craving for Bacon. His obsession with Bacon went beyond consumption and this baffled many. His subjects called him The Mad Mad Bacon Prince. His Dad was know in the land as the Mad, Mad Pastrami King. This Prince had grown tired of traditional Bacon and always sought out the unique and unusual. A normal person would have been satisfied with just eating all that they desired but the Prince was never content. One day while ascending the tower he stopped motionless midway and cloaked himself in silence while he pondered what might be a new Bacon. He said to himself...Hmm What if? In solitude he stared at the wall while his mind raced and finally like a bolt of lightning and a flash a new Bacon was born. I present you with Apple Peppered Deckle Bacon.

Although I love my Maple Bacon Recipe I found myself either smoking with Hickory or Apple. After smoking with Apple a few times I pondered what it would be like to make an all Apple Bacon. Hmmm....why not an all Apple Bacon? How would one go about making an all Apple Bacon? Rhetorical question obviously but begs to be answered. In my opinion one of the prerequisites to making a great bacon is great ingredients or for that matter any food. To the best of my knowledge you cannot buy Apple Sugar or Syrup. Even if you were able to buy Apple Sugar and Syrup it would contain lots of sugar and other artificial ingredients. 

Day dreaming or ruminating over food is my all time favorite thing to do. I love sitting around either creating new recipes or working through culinary epiphanies. This gastronomical creation has it's challenges but that's the fun part. To go where no one has gone before is well suited for my proclivities. 

Here's the recipe for my Apple Bacon. The Apple Sugar & Apply Syrup recipe can be found HERE.

Here is a pretty pic of the Deckle before I trimmed it up a bit.

This is one of the easiest Bacon recipes you will find on my blog and other sites.

Notes on curing and calculating the percentages. Combine the salt and cure together and apply to Deckle getting it into every nook and cranny. 

Apply the Apple Sugar: again getting it into every nook and cranny. Place the Deckle in a vacuum bag and pour Apple Syrup inside. At first it will appear that you do not have enough Apple Syrup but over the next couple of days the bag will make a brine in it's own natural juices and will mingle with the syrup creating a well distributed liquid. It will cure for about 14-21 days depending on thickness of the Deckle. Every day I will massage the bag and flip. Note: This is the closest thing you will ever get to 100% Apple Bacon. After the curing process I will Cold-Smoke with Apple wood.

All cured and rinsed off. 
I added more Apple Sugar and of course Pepper. It will be cold smoked for 9 hours. Note: I set this in front of a fan for about 3 hours to develop a pellicle. You could also place uncovered in the refrigerator overnight to accomplish the same thing.

All sliced up and ready to cook. I placed each slice between parchment paper. Do you notice the sides of the sliced bacon? That's the dehydrated apple. 

AMAZING BACON!!!