Cold Smoking Bacon

[leppolite]

Is it ok to cold smoke bacon injected or pickled with the Blue Ribbon Maple Bacon Cure? You actually recommend a different cure for pickling but dont really say why, is it just personal preference or does this cure not work for regular pickling?

[Jonathon]

leppolite That cure is not a good option for pickling as it has sodium erythorbate already mixed in which is going to cause any cover pickle to gas out so quickly that it won’t have time to penetrate even something thin like Bacon.

For cold smoking you would normally need something with the appropriate levels of Nitrite and Nitrate and this cure only Nitrite. You might be able to use this but can you give me what your process is going to be? The more detail you can give me on what you plan to do the more detailed an answer I will be able to give you.

Thanks!

[leppolite]

Jonathon This would have been my first actual cold smoke. The plan was to run with an Amazen tube and no heat for 8-10 hours until I had good color then freeze and slice. Temp here will be in the 40F range if I do it on Saturday as planned. I have hot/warm smoked bacon before but never cold smoked.

[Jonathon]

leppolite Sorry for the delay we were talking to a few other people here and wanted to see if there was anything we could recommend for this and there just isnt a good way to cold smoke something with this type of cure. I would start cold smoking with something else, and perhaps not do the bacon at all. I have never done it and I just wouldn’t trust cold smoking anything without it having both Nitrites and Nitrates so that you get the immediate curing and slower longer cure.

For Bacon I would always thermal process with the below smoking schedule.
Stage 1 - 120° for an hour with no smoke
Stage 2 - 135° for an hour with smoke
Stage 3 - 150° for an hour with smoke
Stage 4 - 165° for an hour with smoke
Stage 5 - 180° with no smoke until internal temperature reaches 132°

[leppolite]

Jonathon Thank you for the reply, I will grab some bacon flavor enhancer and roll with injecting and hot smoking a bunch and then try something more appropriate for a cold smoke later. Thanks again for taking the time to investigate and respond.

If you have a suggestion for a cure that would be appropriate for cold smoking I would be interested.

[Tomg]

leppolite
I’ve cold smoked a bunch of cheese and store bought salami or summer sausages with the amaz-n-smoke tubes, works great. The cheeses really take on the smoke flavor great. If you have multiple grates to use just keep the area right above the tube free of cheese, the tube does produce some heat directly above it. I buy the bricks of whatever cheese you like and then split them lengthwise into 4 sections about an inch or so square, same with the sausage, pretty tasty.
Tom

[leppolite]

I have both a 6 and 12 inch A-maze-n tubes, the guy that makes them is like 30 minutes away. Stopped and picked up the tubes and some flavored pellets last Friday but not had a chance to use them yet. Hopefully this weekend I will get some cheese smoked. I still need to do a batch of injected bacon this weekend too so I will be busy apparently.