Homemade Smoked Bacon
On June 17, 2021 (Updated November 05, 2024)
This post may contain affiliate links. Please read our disclosure policy.
Making your own homemade Smoked Bacon is a bit of a process, but it’s 100% worth the effort. I’m here to walk you step-by-step through making your own smoked bacon from scratch that is way better than anything you’ll get at the store.
Smoked Bacon
I don’t think I’ve ever cooked anything that made me as excited as this homemade smoked bacon. I mean, it’s bacon. Which is awesome enough. But the fact that I bought a giant slab of pork belly and turned it into beautifully seasoned and smoked homemade bacon made me near giddy. I can’t even wait to share the process with you and watch the proud homemade bacon glow wash over you.
I’m not going to pretend that I am the first person to attempt to make bacon, I did a lot of reading on proper cure times, ratios of curing salt to bacon thickness, etc. I did, however, create these two awesome cure recipes from all of the knowledge I gleaned from those who have made bacon before me. I hope you give them a try!
Homemade Smoked Bacon
Making homemade bacon is a several day process, but it is totally worth it. I’m going to detail my steps for you here so you can follow along and venture into beautiful, homemade smoked bacon territory.
First, you need to pick up a piece of pork belly. Thickness will vary, but lately Costco has been stocking beautiful, already skinned slabs of pork belly. If you are buying from a butcher, see if you can get them to remove the skin from the belly for you. It can be a bit of a nasty job to remove this skin yourself, and it also increases your cure time since it is typically not removed until after the time spent in the cure.
If you have a large piece of meat, I recommend dividing the pork belly into smaller portions so it is easier to handle in the cure. I usually portion mine off so they can easily fit in a gallon sized zip top bag.
How to Cure Bacon
Next, it is time to make the cure. There are two cures in the recipe card below. The peppered cure is a little more sophisticated with some added spice. It is amazing on BLTs and cheeseburgers. The recipe notes contain the ingredients for the maple cure. It is the perfect mixture of sweet and salty and it just screams breakfast.
When you’re ready to make your bacon, place the pork belly in a plastic bag with the cure and seal the bag tightly. You can also vacuum seal the bag to remove all the air if you have this available. Place the bag in the refrigerator and allow it to cure.
Allow the pork belly to cure for approximately 7 days. A general rule is to cure your bacon 7 days for every inch of thickness. Make sure you flip your pork belly over in the cure and massage once a day. If you hit the 7 day mark, you can test your bacon by slicing through the middle to be sure the pork belly is pink all of the way through with no gray left at all. If it isn’t pink through, put it back in the cure for another day and test again. The texture should also feel like a well done steak when it is done curing.
How to Smoke Bacon
After the cure, the pork belly needs to be rinsed and returned to the fridge to develop a sticky skin called a pellicle. I like to place my pork belly on a wire cooling rack on top of a cookie sheet before returning to the fridge. You need to leave your bacon in the fridge for 12-24 hours; I usually leave mine overnight. This air drying time in the fridge will help the smoke really cling to the meat by creating that tacky exterior.
Now it’s smoke time! I like to use apple wood to smoke my bacon, but maple and hickory are also awesome choices. Fire up your favorite pellet grill and keep the temperature as low as possible (I was smoking around 165 degrees F).
Place the cured pork belly on the grill grates of the smoker, close the lid, and smoke for about 6 hours or until the internal temperature is up to 155 degrees F. Invest in a GOOD quality thermometer! It will make all the difference in the finished product if you have an accurate temperature reading. I always recommend ThermoWorks thermometers because they are insanely accurate and very durable.
Once the pork is smoked, you are ready to slice and fry it up! Finally after all of that waiting, it is time to eat that glorious, salty sweet piece of meat heaven. It is hard to resist slicing pieces off right away, so definitely cut off a few pieces and fry them up. If you’ve got the patience, chill the bacon completely before slicing. It’ll make the job much easier when the meat is cold. You can use a meat slicer if you’ve got one, but I just used a really sharp knife and went to work! If you feel intimidated, come try a piece of my homemade bacon. It’ll pluck up your courage. Venture out of your comfort zone and try something new. You got this!
How to Smoke Bacon on a Grill
If you don’t own a smoker and don’t want to buy one, you can actually make a smoker out of your propane grill. Follow through steps below or watch my video for a full tutorial for smoking on a gas grill.
- Make a smoke pouch. You can buy hardwood chips at almost any grocery store, usually in the outdoor cooking aisle. Fold up a large square of aluminum foil into a pouch around the hardwood chips. Use a knife to punch a bunch of holes in the top of the pouch.
- Fire up the grill. Turn on one of your grill’s burners to High and place the pouch over the burner. Once your wood starts to smoke, turn the temperature down to medium.
- Cook the pork. Place the cured pork belly on the un-lit side of the grill and close the lid. Allow the wood chips to smoke and smolder until the internal temperature of the bacon reaches 155 degrees F. You may need to add a new pouch of wood chips if your first burns out before you get your bacon up to temperature.
How Long to Smoke Bacon
With the temperature of your smoker holding steady around 165 degrees F, it will take around 6 hours for the meat to fully smoke.
The goal here is to get your pork to an internal temperature of 155 degrees F. You want to keep the temperatures low during this smoke so you cook the pork through and add all the smoky flavor without rendering any of the fat in the belly.
Recipes for Homemade Smoked Bacon
Ready to put this bacon to good use? Check out some of our popular recipes here on Hey Grill Hey!
- Bacon Wrapped Brats with Beer Cheese Sauce
- BBQ Meatloaf with a Bacon Weave
- Bacon Wrapped Chicken Breast
Smoked Bacon Recipe
Homemade Smoked Bacon
Video
Ingredients
- 1 5-pound slab pork belly skin removed
- 1 Tablespoon fresh cracked black pepper
Peppered Bacon Cure
- 1 ¼ teaspoons Prague Powder #1
- 5 Tablespoons coarse Kosher salt
- 5 Tablespoons brown sugar
- 3 Tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon maple syrup
- 3 Tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon cracked black pepper
- 1 ½ teaspoons crushed red pepper flakes
Instructions
- Prepare the cure. Combine all ingredients for the bacon cure in a bowl. It will be a paste-like consistency. This is exactly what you want.
- Cure the pork belly. Place your slab of pork belly in a large plastic bag (either a large vacuum seal bag or a gallon zip top bag works great for this). Using your hands, transfer some of the cure to the bag with the pork belly and spread it on all sides. Make sure to thoroughly coat all sides of the bacon and use all of the cure. Seal the bag tightly, removing as much air as possible. Place the sealed pork belly package in the refrigerator and cure for the next 7 days. Flip and massage the pork belly once per day.
- Develop a pellicle. After the 7th day in the cure, remove the bacon from the bag. Gently rinse the pork belly to remove any thick slimy build-up on the exterior of the pork. Place it on a wire rack above a baking sheet. Pat the pork belly dry with paper towels. Season the top with the tablespoon of fresh cracked black pepper. Place the peppered bacon in the fridge (while still on the rack) and leave uncovered for at least 12 or up to 24 hours. This step helps develop a tacky coating called a pellicle on the exterior of the bacon.
- Smoke the bacon. Preheat your smoker to 160-170 degrees F using your favorite hardwood. Apple, maple, and hickory are all popular for smoked bacon. Place the pork belly directly on the grill grates, close the lid, and smoke for approximately 6 hours, or until the internal temperature of the pork belly reads 155 degrees F.
- Slice and cook. Let the bacon chill completely in the refrigerator before slicing. A cold slab of bacon is much easier to slice into even pieces. Slice your bacon as thick or as thin as you like (one beauty of making it from scratch) and fry up in a cast iron skillet. Enjoy!
Notes
5 pounds pork belly, skin removed
1 1/4 teaspoon Prague Powder #1
5 Tablespoons coarse Kosher salt
5 Tablespoons maple syrup
5 Tablespoons brown sugar
5 teaspoons cracked black pepper
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
**This post was originally published in August 2015. We recently updated it with more information and helpful tips. The recipe remains the same.
Hey Susie! Thanks for the recipe. One quick question on the Pepper Bacon. You say, “After the bacon is cured and rinsed, rub with an additional tablespoon of cracked black pepper.” Is that 1 TBS per pound, or 1 TBS total? Thanks!
I used about a tablespoon total on my 3 pound slab. However, this one is kind of up to your preference and how strong you want the pepper flavor to be. Feel free to add as much or as little as you want.
After Day 1, the Peppered Bacon is very moist and doesn’t seem to be getting dry. Is that a bad sign?
After Day 1 in the cure? That is totally normal! The salt in the cure is going to draw liquid out of the pork belly.
Thanks! What you’re saying makes perfect sense. I just really wanted to make sure that the belly is curing correctly. My other pork belly, a recipe I found and used Smoked Paprika with, wasn’t as moist.
Hey there! I have made this recipe several times now and this time I had to use a different salt due to my grocery being out of the tender quick. I ended up using Anthony’s pink curing salt and used 1 TBS per lb which I’m now realizing was too much for this particular salt. (There were no directions on the package) Apparently you are supposed to use around 1 tsp per 5 lbs of meat. Would you happen to know how this will affect the curing process and if it is still safe to eat? Thanks so much! Your recipes are the best!
Hey Andrea- unfortunately it isn’t going to be safe to eat that bacon. You’ll be at almost 15 times the FDA recommended levels of nitrates if you cured a 5 pound slab. Pink curing salt is quite different than tenderquick and the ratios make a big difference. I’m so sorry!
Did you modify t your traeger for the low and slow? Ive seen that you can change the “P” stop, but wondered if you just left it on factory settings and on Smoke?
I don’t modify the P settings at all. My smoke setting usually runs at about 150-180 depending on outside temperature and that is perfect for smoking the bacon.
FYI, this recipe works really well for ham too! I discovered this by accident when I decided to try using pork loin instead of pork bellies because my husband complains about store bought bacon always having too much fat and not enough meat. So I thought why not try using this curing method to make our very own all meat-no fat bacon, right? Well we didn’t end up with bacon (turns out you need all that fat to get that bacony crispy crunch, duh). What we did get though was a super high quality, pure, all meat-no gristle, very low fat, tender, juicy, smoky, brown sugary frying ham! Omg sooooooo good! If you love ham and Canadian bacon, try this same curing method with some low fat pork! The results are incredible! Gonna try the pork bellies next time.
That is awesome Reese!! You have inspired me to try this method with a ham! Thanks so much for commenting!
How many days did you cure for a ham?
I have made bacon using Morton quik tender but after reading quik tender can be a cancer causing agents after frying I switched to prauge #1 it supposedly doesn’t . You should research it. prauge #1 is available at Amazon. Fairly cheap and you only use a little so it goes along way. I hope this helps. Homemade bacon is the bomb. Just made 7.5 lbs. Also some costcos carry pork belly.
Hey John! I am definitely going to research more. I bet creating the conversions on the recipe for Prague powder would be super simple. I get pork belly at Costco also! Thanks for taking the time to comment. Have a great one!
You are welcome. better safe then sorry. Have you made Canadian Bacon it’s very good also.
I’m a little confused. Your article says the following: “If you are using other curing agents (Prague powder #1 or #2) you can follow the recipe as written, but substitute the TenderQuick for the correct amount of cure according to the manufacturer’s directions and add an additional 1 teaspoon of both salt and sugar per pound of pork belly.” That seems to me to be 1 tablespoon for 1 pound of pork. Is this not the case? Did I misunderstand your instructions?
Hey Dale- each curing agent has a different ratio. TenderQuik is usually 1 Tablespoon per pound of meat. Instacure #1 is typically 1 teaspoon per 5 pounds of meat. TenderQuick has added salt and sugar to the cure, so when using another curing powder, I supplement with additional salt and sugar to get that same flavor profile.
Pretty much everything causes cancer now a days, breathing the air here in the NYC area causes cancer too, but I will die a fat well fed person who loves bacon…but making my own bacon is awesome, and in a way we are committing suicide by food (technically) but then I am sarcastic and joke about everything, laughter is the best medicine. Happy cooking
Amen! Nobody gets out of here alive (that’s what my daddy always says). Hope your life is a great one! A good sense of humor usually helps with that.
The supposed cancer causing agent in tender quick (sodium nitrite) is exactly what Prague powder or instant cure contains. I use the pink curing salt (Prague powder) for all of my meat cures, ham, bacon, pastrami sausages etc. The amount used is far below “dangerous levels. I’ve used tender quick if I don’t have curing salt on hand
I have probably a dumb question, did you cure the bacon inside the plastic ziplock bags? I’ve read of people doing it in glass pans and I would much prefer a ziplock bag.
how would you alter this recipe if using the Prague Powder? just ordered some but have this method in the cure in the fridge for next week. It says on the label you use just a tiny amount so would you leave everything else the same just reduce the tender quick amount down to the amount required by the prague?
thanks!
Just made this but could not get Tender Quick, used Bradley Maple Cure (at the recommended amounts). This was the only deviation from this recipe and both bacons turned out AWESOME!!
Hey Greg! Thanks so much for stopping by and taking the time to comment! I always have people asking what they can use if they can’t find TenderQuick, so I am thrilled to know that the Bradley’s cure worked out for you. I actually just sliced up a huge batch of the peppered this morning. One of my favorite recipes ever!
We’Re trying it right now… we had it in the fridge for 3 days, turning it once a day…we did not use curing salt, but we brined it in 1/2 cup of kosher salt … I am restricted in salt. We plan to” food saver ” small packages and freeze them. As soon as it’s cooled and been in the freezer about 2 to 3 hrs. It will be easy to slice with our cutter. So excited and it’s hard to wait. Thank you for sharing the details. Ron
Keep me posted! I’ve never tried the brine with Kosher salt only, I’m interested to see how it turns out. I hope you love it!
The old timers (my parents & grandparents, uncles ) always used pure coarse salt to cure the bacon . the salt draws out the water/moisture from the pork belly. then they would wrap it in muslin & hang it from the rafters of the smoke house . then they would smoke it for several hours or days. then when they need some they would slice off what they wanted to cook. because they did not even make MORTONS QUICK CURE/salt back then. OR IF THEY DID IT WASN,T AVAILABLE.
Hello! Just found your website and can’t wait to try some of your recipes! I just bought a Traeger and am attempting your bacon recipe as we speak. It is currently curing. I was just wondering as far as storing it once it is all said and done, can I freeze it in ziploc bags? I know some people vacuum seal it but I don’t have one. Just wondering what you did. Thanks so much!
Hey Andrea- so sorry it took me a few days to get back to you!! Your comment ended up in my spam filter for some reason. I don’t have a vacuum sealer either, so I just placed the sliced bacon in a gallon freezer bag and removed as much air as possible before putting it in my deep freezer. I would say it lasts 1-2 months in the freezer, but ours was all consumed in about 2 weeks! haha. Hope you enjoy the bacon!! Once you go homemade, it is really difficult to go back to store bought.
Thank you so much! I am going to smoke it tomorrow. Can’t wait! I will report back as to how delicious it turned out!
Just wanted to let you know the bacon was AMAZING!! My dad even had me smoke a belly for him and he is picky about his bacon! Thanks again! You are right. I will never go back to store bought bacon again!
Just completed this recipe (both maple & pepper). Hands down the absolute best bacon ever and so easy to do.
Mike! Thank you so much for trying the recipe and taking time to come back and leave a comment! You just made my day. So glad you liked the bacon. -Susie