The Online ‘Every Bacon Style’ Course

Bacon-making at home can be done in many ways, I am putting together an online course that will show you literally every way possible that I know and have learned over 20 years.

I’ve noticed online content has a massive variation in how bacon is made, also there is confusion over the ways you make it. Showcasing it has a ‘recipe’, when the recipe is only one aspect of making bacon when you consider curing, smoking, and drying.

Since bacon started my meat-curing adventures, I wanted to help others make it at home with ease.

Here is what the course will include below.

Ultimate Online Bacon Course Outline

1) Intro – Meat, Methods, and Bacon Flavor Bombs

Bacon can come from any part of an animal, there is definitely a reason why streaky bacon is so popular!

In my earliest bacon adventures, I was using wild pork I harvested – which is mainly incredibly lean. Bacon without fat is like fish without water in my opinion. You have to have a bit of fat, sometimes this fat isn’t the classic white pork fat either, it can be intermuscular – embedded into the main meat muscle also.

I’ll cover off fat in this course, it’s not essential – some styles of bacon are very lean ie. Turkey Bacon or Canadian Bacon (both covered in this course)

Whether you use a dry or wet type of cure for the bacon, this decides on the equipment and process. So here I will show you where to head.

2) Kit & Equipment with Tips/Advice

Salt, Pork, and some amount of smoke – possibly some sweetness.

This for me is quintessential for bacon in my eyes and mouth.

This online course will cover ways to either make bacon in an apartment with no outside smoker or whether you have a dedicated smokehouse in your yard.

Curing and what equipment you need, for instance, type of bowl or bag for curing. I know this sounds silly, but I want to show the best ways I’ve developed over the years.

Through to covering the fastest way to wet brine bacon as well.

The thing is about making cured meats, it’s not just like following a recipe. If someone understands why they are curing, I think this will help a lot to get delicious consistent outcomes for you’re family and friends too!

For curing, you are either holding moisture inside the meat cells or you are inhibiting the bacon with salt to slow down water activity so that when you are drying bacon, unwanted bacteria aren’t that keen on spoiling this.

The bacon course will have a complete video on this. In both instances, it also imparts the saltiness that bacon is all about!

I’ll also cover how you choose the level of saltiness precisely for your tastebuds.

3) Hot and Cold Smokers for Bacon – Suggestions/Buying

Whether you have a smoker or not. I’ll highlight whether you need to retrofit the smoker, or how you can utilize what you have got.

Don’t worry if you don’t have a smoker or space for one, I’ll also cover how to make bacon without a smoker!

4) Steps – Overview

Step by Step I want to show you how the different methods are done, with some ninja tips I’ve come up with over the years.

Essentially there is shaping meat, curing first, then smoke/cooking. However, in between the major steps I’ve got some tips and tricks.

5) Curing Stage Intro – All the Options

It’s not time-consuming making bacon, it takes time initially, but then you just start a process which then you set and nearly forget about for a while.

Let salt, sweetness, spices, and magic happen (diffusion and binding are the technical terms of it).

6) Wet Brining Bacon

If you want more ham-style bacon, then wet brining/pickling is the way to go. It’s a cure that involves water surrounding the meat during the curing.

I’ll highlight a couple of ways I do this, and how to the wet curing bacon results – faster than how most people do it.

7) Precision Curing Bacon

Weight vs Volume is an ongoing issue, that I highlight on my blog, eatcuredmeat.com. Weighing an ingredient accurately is foolproof compared to teaspoons. EQ Curing is the way forward.

This is a cornerstone of how I work out precise saltiness in my bacon and other charcuterie projects.

Full detail about this method in the course.

8) Smoking Stage Intro – Cooking or Drying

To give you some idea of the smoking stage or potentially no smoking too.

I will go over how to get smoke into bacon without smoking it.

Smoking also has a few tricks like drying the meat to form a pellicle so that the smoke vapor sticks to the meat more easily.

Humdity factors will also be covered depending on what type of smoker you are using.

I’m going to show videos of using different methods for cold smoking, from the simplest I have found, which uses nearly nothing but a few lumps of charcoal to smoke generators.

9) Hot Smoking or Oven Baked

You would be surprised about the subtle aspects that hot smoking can entail, I run through this in detail about where you need to add the moisture and when you don’t need to.

Pros and Cons for each hot smoking method, that I’ve learned.

Also, the method which doesn’t require a smoker – just an oven!

10) Cold Smoking Bacon

From big stack smokehouse to using a wooden box. I want to cover the principles of cold smoking so that you can use a retrofit device or existing device, or build your own smokehouse!

11) Top Tips on Slicing and Storing Bacon for Ease of Use

I’ve come up with a ninja tip method to have bacon ready to through straight in the frying pan, but you can store it for years this way.

This is the way I use to provide us with bacon for many months. I want to highlight this and you can do it at home as well.

Whether you like it thick slab sliced or thin and crispy, I’ve got you covered.

If you want to just gauge a base recipe, then work out how salty you want it, there will be calc spreadsheets for each style so you can adjust it accordingly.

12) Your Custom Spice Bomb – remember bacon is = salt, sweet, smoke + other

I’ve developed some ideas and quantities around many different spices and herbs, so you have a spice menu to figure out what direction you might want to head.