Homemade Bacon

Before Christmas when I was getting ready to make a homemade corned beef, I picked up a pound of frozen skin-on pork belly from my butcher. About two weeks ago, I thawed it out and applied a very basic cure. Thursday I slow roasted it in a 200F oven until the middle had just reached 150F (you see it just out of the oven in the two left photos). Today, I cut three very thick slices and cooked them up in my favorite cast iron skillet. Cold skillet into a cold oven which I then turned on to 425F and set the timer to 22 minutes. I gave it an extra minute or so at the end.

It was magnificent. The next time will involve my smoker but this was a great way to get a good sense of the basic cure. The finished product is sweet, savory, and salty. The skin gives this fantastic crunch but the thick, hand-cut slices means the bacon itself is tender and chewy without being soggy.

I waited way too long to do this. I don't know that I'll ever buy bacon again.