Our Lovely Smokehouse

Praise and love to dear Uncle Robert!

When my brother heard that the hogs had been butchered, he offered to come up and help us construct a smokehouse. Well, had I any idea what he actually had in mind, I probably would have said "no thanks!" Haha! I'm very glad that the runaway train left the station before I could say anything, because what we have now is so beautiful and wonderful that I don't even care about the intense undertaking it ended up being.

I'm not going to explain, step by step, what we did...I will only tell you the basic elements involved and then leave you with a whole bunch of pictures of the process. There are as many ways to build a smokehouse as there are fish in the sea...so long as a few basics are kept in mind, and so long as the smoker is patient with him/herself, it will work gloriously and all involved will eat like kings!

The smokehouse we constructed is intended for cold smoking meats, cheeses, nuts and a whole variety of food stuffs. Cold smoking is a much more involved (but time worthy!) method of smoking food which enables the smoker a wider selection of smoke styles. The smoke flavors the meat and begins to preserve it without cooking it in a normal "heat meets meat" way. Due to the absence of a lot of heat, you can smoke things for much longer, arrive at much more complex flavors and smoke many more types of foods than with a typical high heat smoking method. 

The important factors to consider when constructing a smokehouse for cold smoking:

-Creating a critter and bug proof structure.

-Creating a firebox which removes the heat of the fire from the smoking area.

-Creating a place for the smoke to go...so, a venting system of some sort, so that the smoke can pass over the meat.

-Creating a smoking area where meat can be hung/racked without touching(other pieces of meat).

We got the draft on our smokehouse just right and the chimney just sucks the smoke right up into the house. If anyone has any questions about what we did, materials used, etc...just ask in the comments and I will answer!

With all of that in mind...enjoy the pictures of our smokehouse construction!

Happy Smokehouse. Thank you, Uncle Robert! We love you so much...now, time to get smoking! This thing is going to be jamming! 

Who Doesn't Love Bacon?

Crazy people, that's who!

Well it's been about a year since I've updated this blog! In that year we've gone from two babies to three, upped our production of rabbits and much, much more. I solemnly swear to get better at this blogging thing...and now that I've made my apologies, let me make it up to you, dear readers! Today, I'm going to talk to you about something that everyone loves: Pork. Specifically, homestead cured and smoked, all natural bacon.

So, to get into it! We butchered hogs a while back and I had about 200 pounds of pork in the chest freezer. Only one thing to do now, let's say it together: MAKE BACON!

The first thing to do, of course, is thaw your pork bellies in the refrigerator. When the belly is thawed, give it a good rinse, pat it dry and marvel at the gorgeous chunk of meat you are about to handle:

Go ahead and take a moment to gaze into its perfect fattiness....yes yesss, here's a closer look:

That is nice, is it not? Now that you want it (BAD!) let's chop it in to pieces that are easier to cure and, later, hang and smoke:

My first belly sliced into four perfect pieces. Now that we have manageable pieces of belly, let's prepare our curing agents. I have been around bacon-making but have never done it alone with my own bellies before. So I decided to go with a basic dry cure...the usual suspects you'll find in many a recipe. Tried and true:

                                                               1C kosher salt
                                                      3/4C Organic Brown Sugar
                                                                3TBS Thyme
                                                        1TBS Fresh Black Pepper
                                                              1TBS Coriander

The Coriander is just because I put at least a little bit of curry in everything. Yeah, just about everything. It's good, try it...just start sprinkling it in everything you cook. Anyway, it gets to looking like this when you mix it up:

Next, rub it all over the pork!  Always be generous with your bellies, you need lots of salt rubbed in there to suck out the moisture in the meat and generous amounts of everything else for good flavor, so have at it! It will look something like this when you are done:

 Now, stack it in the fridge in the bins and let it sit for about a week, making sure you turn it over once a day so that as the pool of juices seeping out of the meat begins to form, you do not have it sitting in juice on one side and not the other. NOTE: Use plastic or glass for dry curing meat, NOT metal.

These bins were super cheap at Market Basket and fit perfectly right where I wanted to keep them, so that is excellent. A couple of days into curing, the bellies are starting to feel firm and are looking (and smelling!) fantastic!

The recipe for the curing ingredients gave me a good amount more than I needed..so I saved the extras and every other day would rub a bit more into the slabs.

On day six, they are looking very nice:

After seven full days of curing, I'm getting antsy to start smoking them. They are just as I think they are supposed to be...feeling firm, turning a lovely shade and showing a nice collection of juices in the bottom of the dish they are curing in. The next step will be smoking them in our brand new smokehouse that we've been killing ourselves to make! Intrigued? Stay tuned.... ;)