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If you're like me, you know that bacon is the stuff that dreams are made of. I really believe that through the power of bacon, we can make the world a better place. With that in mind, I'm gonna show you how to make homemade bacon in five lil' steps. BACON. (Mmmm. Bacon.) (Don’t want to read all the words? This blog post is also a podcast—just press the triangle play button on the little black bar at the top of this post!) Now—to be clear—this is how we go about makin' homemade bacon at Clucky Dickens Farm. If you do a google search of how to make bacon, you will come up with lots of different recipes. Our process requires uses a wet cure/brine and we utilize a smoker. Everyone has their own thing and their own preferences. The great thing about making your own bacon is the more experience you have with making it, the more tricks you will figure out. Step #1 to homemade bacon: find a pig belly Bacon comes from the belly of the hog. It's the underside of the pig. Some pigs are better for makin' bacon than others. A really long-bodied pig is going to provide you with a much longer slab of belly meat than a shorter-bodied pig. If you don't raise your own hogs, you'll need to find some pork belly from someone local or a butcher. The availability of this will totally depend on where you live. We raise our own pigs because a) pigs are awesome, b) we're lucky enough to have a place to do so, and c) well, bacon. Little tip: We've made homemade bacon for several years now and what we've discovered is it is best to make the bacon before the pork belly cuts go into the freezer. In years past, we have frozen all the cuts from the pork belly to make bacon at a later date. No, no, no, grasshopper. This year we took the pork belly and immediately started this process at the very end of the butchering/processing excitement. You can really tell the difference in the taste of the bacon. (Although if you do already have the pork belly frozen and want to make homemade bacon, don't let this stop you. It's still going to be awesome.) Step #2 to homemade bacon: brine/cure Some people refer to this part as brining, others refer to it as curing. Whatever it is, it's the longest part of the bacon process—unless you count raising the pig. We've experimented with several different brines/cures but here is what we've settled on using thus far: Homemade Bacon Wet Brine: (Printable recipe at bottom of blog post!) To one gallon of warm water, add... 1 cup brown sugar 1 cup white sugar 1 cup salt (canning salt or kosher salt, not iodized salt) 1 tsp pink curing salt/Insta Cure #1 (not #2) (We have also used this recipe using 1 Tbsp of pink curing salt. It's all about your comfort level with the whole nitrate argument.) Mix until dissolved. Place your nicely trimmed pork belly chunks into a five gallon pail. Pour the brine over the meat, and keep adding more brine made with the above portions until the meat is completely covered with liquid. (It usually takes us 2 gallons of brine to cover the meat in a five gallon bucket, but your experience may be different.) Fill a plastic bag with water and set it on top of all of this. The water filled bag will prevent the meat from shifting or floating to the top of the bucket. It is very important that the meat stays completely submerged in this brine for 10-14 days—not just for flavor of your homemade bacon, but for the safety of your gut. Cover the bucket and set in the fridge for 10-14 days. This works especially great if you have an extra fridge (like—ahem—a beer fridge). You do not need to stir what's in the bucket. Just let it sit undisturbed. Be patient and dream of homemade bacon. Note: Look ahead in your calendar and figure out what day you're going to tackle the next three steps. It's going to take some work and attention so you want to make sure you've got a day you can make it happen. Step #3 to homemade bacon: smoke