Thanks to everyone's contributions to the recent curing threads, I felt motivated to cure some bacon. I picked up a pork belly earlier in the week with that in mind. I almost faltered; someone coughDK117cough brought up the idea of making burnt ends from pork belly in the Super Bowl thread which nearly sabotaged the process by diverting the belly in that direction. But I held firm.

I'm using the dry-cure-ingredients-in-a-zip-lock-bag method. Got it started tonight. I really like the look of this belly; it's not as awesome as LowSlowJoe's recent pic, but it looks pretty good!

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That truly is some very good looking belly, that is going to be really good stuff.

Agree with yorkdude, that is going to be some nice meaty bacon!

Tuned in to this one

Wow, I thought you told me the belly you got didn't look as good as those I've shown... That's a darn good looking belly there. 

I smoked the bacon I've been curing, this evening. If the aroma is any indication, it came out really well. I'll cook up some slices tomorrow as it got kinda late on me tonight. It spent 9 days in the cure; I would have smoked it after 7 days but had no time in the evenings this past week. This encourages me to do more and try some different flavors, but first I have to eat all this wonderful bacon.    Thanks again to all of you; I wouldn't have even tried it without your support.

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Excellent job, looks really good.
Let us know how it is.

Looks great.  Let us know if you need company to take down some of that awesome looking and I am sure tasting bacon.

Nicely done!  I have 2 in the fridge I have to get started on...

Fried up a few slices and made a quick BLT+C. It tastes outstanding, I'm sure in part to the fact that it was homemade so I perceive it as better. I know I'm not telling a lot of you something you don't already know, but really, this simple cured bacon is way better than any mass-cured bacon I've had. You're probably thinking, "Welcome to the club!"

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Looks great!

 

A nice piece of meat and you did a great job with it.   

guess i need to do one of these...thanks for sharing

Great Job...     I put off making bacon for several years, I was really freaked out thinking it all seemed so complex...   that was back before I had discovered what many now call the EQ style of curing, which effectively means you use just enough salt and nitrite that it's virtually impossible to get it too salty even if you let it go for 5 days or more longer then you might have planned... the salt 'equalizes' with the meat and liquids that get pulled off, no more salt transfer takes place...  With this EQ method, it's really quite easy to make bacon...   I would strongly encourage anyone who might have been in fear of doing bacon, to give it a try, it's actually quite fun and very tasty.

 But anyway...    I experimented with a bunch of different spices and sugar types, and honestly I can't usually tell the difference between bacon made with white sugar, vs brown sugar...   You'd think that it would be relatively easy to tell, but I did some blind taste tests, with my daughter, and we really could not tell...    Same really for maple syrup and maple sugar... ( although if you put enough on it, I'm sure eventually you can tell ).      Maybe it's because I tend to try and not over do it on my spices... maybe next batch I'll go overboard with some spices and see if I can taste any difference...

  For the most part... a little black pepper and maybe some cayenne pepper to go with the salt and sugar is about all I typically use...    My last batch used some salt and sugar free Memphis dust... it turned out good, but again, I'm not at all sure I can taste the difference between it and any other bacon I did in the past...   I guess I need to try like doubling the amount of spices I use...