Brown Sugar Bourbon Bacon

There lived a Prince with an insatiable Bacon craving. 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. 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 Brown Sugar Bourbon Bacon. 

Over the years I have made so many bacons (and many posts too) and this is no different so with that I am not going to provide a ton of details here. Here is a link if you want a lot more information.....Link. 

Big old beef Belly aka Navel

Combine the Salt, Cure #1 and Bacon Booster in a bowl and mix well. Coat meat getting it into every nook and cranny. Bacon Booster is optional and certainly not required. check out my curing notes HERE. Bacon Booster HERE.

Cover in Brown Sugar

Place everything in the vac bag and pour in the Bourbon. Place in refrigerator for 15-21 days and flip over everyday. 

It's been about 15 days and since this one was a smaller belly that's all it needed. Going 21 days would have been fine too. It was taken out of the Vac bag and rinsed and dried. 

I poured on some more Brown Sugar Bourbon and using my hands I smeared it all over the Bacon. You can never have enough of this stuff on your Bacon. Now spread over the Navel some more brown sugar.

  I cold smoked the bacon for about 10 hrs. As summer is approaching and days are getting warmer I chose to cold smoke at 10 Pm. I used the A-Maze-N Cold Smoker which uses pellets. 

Before I started slicing the Bacon on my berkel I stuck it in the freezer for 2 hours. As we all know slicing partially frozen meat is much easier. 

Just a pretty picture

One more

Packaging the Bacon. I used 12 x 10 inch parchment paper to separate the Bacon. 3 slices to every piece of paper. If you don't do it this way they will stick together and they will be hard to separate. 

Review- The Bacon came out great. If you like Brown Sugar Bourbon this is a must try. But truth be told I still prefer my Maple Bacon recipe. My Maple Bacon Recipe is my go to for everyday Bacon. If you want to try a Bacon try the Maple version. This basic recipe and be modified. You could add bayleaf, pepper or garlic. Only limited to your imagination. 


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Jalapeno Coffee Bacon Revised

This is my revised version of my Jalapeno Coffee Bacon. The original version had no coffee  taste and only a hint of Jalapeno. The taste was great and everyone loved the bacon but my culinary goals were not achieved. Hopefully this revised version will hit the mark. Let's hope these new techniques don't over power the bacon. In this post I will give a quick outline and for more details click the link above. 

Personal preference of course so I only went with 4 jalapeno's. I used a whole pot of french press coffee and combined. 

Place all ingredients in your favorite blender (mine is the vitamix) and blend away. I strained the coffee chili mixture several times. Twice through a sieve and once through cheese cloth and sieve. 

This is my contraption I used to inject the bacon. My favorite needle for this application has multiple holes along the shaft. 

NOTE: Make sure the above mixture is cool before you inject. In fact you could do this several hours ahead or a day or two which ever is convenient. 

Inject as much or as little as you want but make sure it's evenly distributed. I injected into the sides and the bottom and the top.

Beef Navel 

Place Bacon in large enough container to hold. It's gonna get messy. 

Combine Salt, Cure #1 and Bacon Booster and rub into meat. Get the cure into every nook and cranny.

Combine in a large bowl Brown Sugar, Maple Sugar, Dextrose and Coffee and as much Jalapeno powder as you want Note: The addition of jalapeno powder to the rub is a change.  Rub into every nook and cranny of the Navel.  

Place Navel inside a very large vacuum bag or what ever you have and toss in the Maple sauce (note: in this one there is (Note: There is no fresh jalapenos added to the maple syrup like version one). Make sure to distribute it all around the Navel. Vacuum seal and place in refrigerator. It will cure for a total of 21 days. Over the course of the 21 day cure you will turn bag over everyday. I sometimes do it every 12 hours making sure I massage the meat too. 

Well it's been 21 days exactly and the bacon is ready for the next step. Bacon removed from Vac Seal home and rinsed thoroughly under cold water and paper toweled dried.
"Before cured foods are smoked, they should be allowed to air-dry long enough to form a tacky skin, known as a pellicle. The pellicle plays a key role in producing excellent smoked items. It acts as a kind of protective barrier for the food, and also plays an important role in capturing the smoke’s flavor and color."

HELLO JALAPENO!!!! GREAT STUFF!!!  

Bacon covered in Coarse Ground Coffee, Jalapeno Powder, Black Pepper, and Maple Sugar. How much is up to you. I wanted to create a drier skin/pellicle before the smoke so I place a little fan off to the side for 90 minutes. 

Cold smoked for 16 hours exactly. Since I did not use Smoked black pepper I went a little longer. 

Gratuitous Pictures and review at bottom.  

Review- Very tasty!!! Another exceptional Bacon. So question before us is whether or not the injection made a difference. Yes injecting the bacon with coffee and jalapeno made a difference but not a huge one. Yes the bacon tasted outstanding and there was a little heat and a very mild coffee taste but was it significant? You had to know there was coffee in the dang thing to know it was there. Contrasting the first one with the second one I prefer the second one but the taste difference was not significant. If you really want heat and a coffee taste in the bacon you will have to coat each bacon strip. If you drink a cup of coffee while eating the bacon it will help too. It was a waste of good coffee if you ask me. Coffee did not play a significant role in this bacon.

TOP OF THE BACON

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!!!