Belly Bacon. Follow RK or Charcuterie methods?

[GratefulDave]

Smoking belly bacon at present. I own Kutas' 4th edition which states to smoke the bacon in a 135 deg smoker until 127 internal temp is achieved. The Charcuterie book says to "hot smoke" at 200 deg until 150 internal is achieved.
Anyone have insight on the different methods? i went with the Kutas method last time and it was fine, just a long process. This time I have been keeping smoker temp around 180-185 and after just over 3 hrs, I am at 130 ish in all four pieces I have in the smoker. I am planing to go close to 150 finished temp so I can make sure to get a good smoke on the meat and will post pics and thoughts when it is done. Just wondering what the gallery thought of the differences in methods.
Thanks

Dave

[erain]

Smoking belly bacon at present. I own Kutas' 4th edition which states to smoke the bacon in a 135 deg smoker until 127 internal temp is achieved. The Charcuterie book says to "hot smoke" at 200 deg until 150 internal is achieved.
Anyone have insight on the different methods? i went with the Kutas method last time and it was fine, just a long process. This time I have been keeping smoker temp around 180-185 and after just over 3 hrs, I am at 130 ish in all four pieces I have in the smoker. I am planing to go close to 150 finished temp so I can make sure to get a good smoke on the meat and will post pics and thoughts when it is done. Just wondering what the gallery thought of the differences in methods.
Thanks

Dave

i dont see where the internal temp is an issue here, the bellie is cured so no need to worry about the 4 hr rule etc... i always smoke mine low heat, until it gets the color, amount of smoke i desire. i would be careful though of not getting it too hot where the fat starts to render and drip.

[Old poi dog]

Aloha,
For what its worth, I've done Bacon only 4 times so far and as erain and others shared with me, the bacon is cured, so no need to worry about taking the bacon to an internal temp. I smoke my bacon at about 120 degrees smoker temp, for about 6 hours (I like the mahogany color).

[lcruzen]

I think the 200o is a little hot and could result in fat rendering as erain stated. There is really no need to take the internal temp up to 152o(but I always do) as your going to cook the bacon again when you use it and that will bring it up to temp.

[curious aardvark]

what erain said.

Treat it as a cold smoke.
You can cook it to 'ham' if you like. but that kinda defeats the object I think.

Cold smoke 5-10 hours, keep the temps below 100.

[GratefulDave]

Thanks for sharing your thoughts guys. I just took the bacon off after about 5 hours. Internal temps were 138-141 throughout the 4 sections of bacon. I always thought bacon was a cold smoke item too, but have to give some credit or consideration to the sources of my question. Anyway, the bacon looks and smells awesome. I will start a new thread with a few pics that I have. Either way...it's still BACON!!

Thanks again.

Dave

[chefrob]

eventhough i have not done a belly yet (@$.99 for butt i don't see it in the near future) i have been doing a lot of BBB for the last year or so. when i first started doing BBB i took it to a fully cooked state. while i liked it to snack on, i wasn't real happy with the frying for breakfast. IMHO i feel that durring the smoke, some of the rendered fat that i saw in the smoker never made it to the pan bringing along it's extra smokie goodness and resulting in that crispyness that belly has. that's when i decided to #1, look for a fatty butt. #2 butterfly the butt after deboning to ensure that at least 1/2 of the slice will have some good fattyness to it. and #3, don't bring it up above 135, this way you will need to fry the BBB and render the fat and thus the meat cooks in it's own fat imparting more smoke and other flavors.

also there is another rection going on. when you are carmelizing sugars, and amino acids slowly, you build different compounds and flavors. think of caramelizing onions, they don't tast the same as sauteed onions with some color on them. i find that just warming up smoked meat doesn't lend to the same flavor as bringing it from a raw state. this is why i have been lowering the final "smoked" temp of my BBB. while i haven't done a belly yet, i see the above aplying to a belly even more since the higher fat content. i mean how good is fried chix or duck skin, hell even the carmelized fatty part on a ribeye........to me the holy grail has got to be the melt in yer mouth smokie salty crispiness of pork fat.