I have a special relationship with bacon. I don’t think I’m alone. I can remember the first time I tasted it. Even though the jewish household I was brought up in wasn’t strictly kosher, my parents never fed us pork at home (besides the occasional chinese spare rib from my grandfather). So in bacon-terms, I was a bit of a late bloomer.

I was 11 or so. It was summer. It was a Bob’s Big Boy in Connecticut. One bite and I was hooked.

Since then, that summer romance has gone from a crush to a full fledged obsession. Pig in all its many forms is a glorious thing. Living in Brooklyn now, you can throw a dart and it would probably land on some indulgent pork dish. Eating out is fun, and Frankies’ Bacon is pretty hard to beat. However, there’s only one really way to take any bacon obsession to the next level: Make your own.

Spurred by Michael Ruhlman and the BLT from scratch challenge he’s running, I figured it was time to try my hand. I was a little worried at first, letting raw meat sit for so long in the fridge. As soon as I tasted it, though, my worries turned into absolute glee: This is the best bacon I’ve ever had. That first crispy fatty bite, at the Bob’s big boy, paled in comparison to the unctuous, smokey flavor, of my own creation.

Following the recipe from Charcuterie, there’s really only one special ingredient that you need (pink salt) and its very easily procured from Butcher & Packer.

I also halved the recipe and split the Pork belly in half to try two different approaches.

Maple-cured Smoked Bacon

Ingredients: 2 ounces/50 grams kosher salt
2 teaspoons/12 grams pink salt
1/4 cup dark brown sugar
1/4 cup maple syrup (use something good, no Aunt Jemima)
5 pound slab of pork belly, with skin

1. Combine the dry ingredients first, then add the syrup and mix well.

2. Rub the belly on all sides with the mixture, massaging and getting into all the crevices.

3. Place belly and any remaining cure into a very big (2 gallon) zip lock bag, remove all the
air before sealing and then massage the bag so that the cure is evenly distributed.

4. Put in the fridge for at least a week (every day over a week, it will get saltier) turning over and massaging every other day. Remove when the meat feels firm. Note: After 9 days, my belly still didn’t feel firm in the plastic bag. However, once I removed it, it felt much firmer. The plastic bag gave a bit of a squishy illusion.

5. Remove the belly, rinse the cure off completely and let dry in the fridge over night (at least 12 hours).

6. Smoke that belly! I smoked the belly on a grill with wood chunks that I soaked for a number of hours. The important thing is to keep it out of direct heat – you want more smoke then heat. The idea is to slowly get the bacon to an internal temperature of 150F. Stick a thermometer in its side (not through the skin) to test. Once you take it off and let it cool for a bit, if you’ve done your job right, you should be able to remove the skin easily.

Once complete, you can keep it in the fridge, or freeze the whole thing, which makes it keep a lot longer and also makes it much easier to slice.

There’s not much more I can say about how awesome this bacon tastes. We cooked a couple slices just straight on the grill at a friends house for July 4th. We cut it into little chunks for people to get a taste. They disappeared almost instantly.