Pork Buckboard Bacon (pork butt)

[Greg Jones]

I recently saw a recipe for buckboard bacon posted by Jess Pryles and I thought I would give it a try. I had a boneless pork butt from Costco and half a pork loin, so I cured both for 14 days and smoked them yesterday. I had hickory pellets in the hopper and smoke tube of my RT-700, set the temp to LO, and put the pork on at 10 am. Now Jess says in the recipe that she sets her smoker to 180* and then pulls the butt at IT of 160*, smoke time of 2-3 hours. Well, I suspected that cook time was way low so I planned on 5-6 hours for the butt and just assumed the loin would be done about an hour sooner.

The loin ran about 10* hotter than the butt for the entire cook, and after 9 hours the loin was 159* and the butt was 150*, so I called it quits at that. I wrapped them in cling wrap and put them on a wire rack in the refrigerator overnight. I sliced them this morning and they look amazing. i fried up slices of both, starting first with the butt. As to taste, it tasted a lot like a smoked city ham. The level of smoke was the most I have ever experienced on a pellet grill, actually a bit too much for my taste. I had expected that the loin would be similar to Canadian bacon, but it was not. It still tasted like loin, but the cure and the smoke made for a very nice flavor.

Would I make either one again? For the pork butt, I originally said probably not, but after letting the slices rest for a day, they taste much better. The harsh, overly smoked taste was gone. I’ll probably do the loin again, curing and smoking it at the same time I’m smoking bacon.

 

[Greg Jones]

I forgot to post these-what it looked like at the beginning so you can see what the cure looks like, and when I took them off.

 

[Pete590]

Looks great,how did you cure ?

 

[C. Keeper]

Looks great @Greg Jones !

 

[Greg Jones]

Looks great,how did you cure ?

Jess has the formula in her article that I linked in the first post. The only thing I do differently is only use half as much sugar and I use Turbinado instead of white sugar. Put it in a plastic bag and refrigerate for 14 days, turning it over every day. Works great for pork belly bacon also, although I cure it for 7 days instead of 14.

 

[Pete590]

Got it
thanks

 

[Greg Jones]

As an update, I cooked two slices of the Buckboard bacon as part of lunch today, and my wife and I both agreed it tasted much better than it did when I first sliced it yesterday. The harsh smoke flavor was now very mild, and we both enjoyed it a lot. The rest of the batch is sealed up and in the freezer, and if it all is as good as what we had today, I’ll definitely make it again.