OK. Done and tasted. Wife said it tastes very good. I am not big on salty things but I think it could have used a touch more salt or maybe more brine time.
Here is what I did-
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup salt
1/2 cup Morton's TQ
8 ounces molasses
1/2 gallon (2 quarts) water
1/2 gallon (2 quarts) apple cider
2 tablespoons course ground black pepper
1 (5 pound) piece raw pork belly center cut
In a large non-reactive pot, bring half the water, sugar, salt, TQ and molasses to a boil. Stir to dissolve the sugar. Pour into a large container with the remaining water, and the apple cider. Place in the refrigerator and cool to 40 degrees F.
Press the black pepper into the pork belly. Once the brine has cooled place the peppered pork belly into the mixture until completely submerged. Refrigerate for five days. Turn over in brine each day.
After five days have passed, remove the pork from the brine and pat dry with paper towels. Lay on a rack over a sheet pan and place in front of a fan for 1 hour to form a pellicle. Lay the pork in a cold smoker and smoke for 4 to 6 hours. Chill the meat in the freezer for 1 hour to stiffen for easy slicing into strips of bacon. Slice what you need and keep the remainder in a freezer safe bag in the refrigerator or freezer.
Place the strips of bacon onto a sheet pan fitted with a rack and place into a cold oven. Turn the oven to 400 degrees F and cook for about 12 to 15 minutes, depending on how crispy you like your bacon. Remove from rack and drain on paper towels. Enjoy.
Sure looks good...
I'm surprised you didn't think it was salty enough... by my calculations you were using roughly 4.2% salt ( one cup salt roughly 10.4 ounces , 1.25 gallons of liquids weighing about 10.4 pounds + 5 pounds of meat ( total of 246.4 ounces of liquid+meat )). Now, I know some salt weighs a lot less per cup, so it's hard to know exactly what the actual numbers are...
What may have been going on is that it seems to me you used about 4 times more sugar than I do... perhaps the sweet was covering up the 'salt'. This is the first time I've ever tried to calculate out the sugar content in a bacon recipe with molasses in it... but Google says there are 252 grams of sugar in a cup of Molasses.. Google also says there are 200 grams of sugar in a cup of sugar, so by my calculations you used roughly 452 grams of sugar, which is about 15.9 ounces of sugar... and my calculations say that's about 6.4% sugar ( I typically use just 1.5% sugar in my bacon ).
Anyway, it really does look great and I'm not trying to be critical, just giving you my own analysis of your current recipe... and trying to figure out why it's not salty enough for your tastes... ( take my advice with a grain of salt
) but I'd try using less sugar , rather than more salt... or lowering both down to something closer to 2% salt, 1.5% sugar... Oh, and you also could very well be correct that waiting longer could help get more salt into the meat...
