Whole 30 Bacon

My wife has embarked on the Whole 30 diet. If making bacon to support her in her better eating endeavor is something I have to do, I suppose that is a sacrifice I am willing to make. For those not familiar with the diet, it is very similar to a paleo diet. Basically you can eat meat, fruit and veggies. No dairy, soy, legumes, simple sugar, grains, etc. There is a bit more to it than that, but that is it in a nutshell. Since most bacon cures include some sort of sugar, that would mean just about every bacon you can buy in any store anywhere is out.

So the rub/brine for the bacon was roughly 3 parts salt to 2 parts ground black pepper. Coat the pork belly liberally and let it sit in a plastic bag in the fridge for about 5 days, flipping it over every day.

On day 5, prepare the smoker, smoke the bacon for about 4 hours at a temperature somewhere between 160 and 200 (the closer to 160 you can get, the better). Then take it off, let it set on the counter for about an hour, then you can cut, cook and eat, put in the fridge or freeze.

For prepping the smoker I did a little tweaking this time. For bacon you want low heat for the entire smoke time. In order to help assure that I took out the regular fire basket. Then I got two 20 1/2 by 13 inch aluminum pans (about 3 inches deep). These are often sold as full size deep steam pans. One of them I put about a dozen holes in the bottom. The other one I put holes all along the sides, 4 on the long sides and 2 on the short sides. The pan with the holes on the side went in the bottom of the smoker. I loaded that up with maple wood. Then I lit about 2/3 of a chimney of charcoal and when it was going well (about 20 minutes) I dumped it on top of the wood in the pan, then put the pan with the holes on top over it. It wasn't a snug fit, but it was good enough to block most of the heat. I also plugged up most of the air holes around the smoker. I checked the temp several times and it never got above 180.

So there ya go, bacon for people on a diet. Who knew BBQ was health food?