So You Want to Raise Pigs

Righteous Bacon Blog ^ | March 21, 2013 | by Diana

[VRWCarea51]

We always clipped them, but if you keep them after a year or two they will still get big

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

I am thinking of raising red wattle pigs.

Really good bacon!

[Ellendra]

Thanks, I’ll check that out!

[Ellendra]

This wasn’t uncured. I used a maple/brown sugar cure recipe. I may have used too much cure for the amount of meat, I was afraid I had used too little and kept adding extra. And I’m pretty sure I let it cure for too long. It came out VERY salty.

The smoking went well. I built a cold-smoker out of a metal cabinet. Smoked for 6 hours using store-bought hickory chips. In future years I should have fruit tree prunings or corn cobs from my farm to use.

One mistake I found out about afterwards was in not inspecting the racks I had the meat on. I used the same cooling racks that I normally use for baking, but it seems the coating was a little loose in places. I had to trim spots where the coating came off on the meat.

When I cooked up my bacon, it came out looking more like ham. It never got crispy. And the flavor was way too strong, I ended up frying it with some diced potatoes to tame down the flavor a bit.

All in all, it came out pretty good for my first try without anyone in-person there to help. I just think it could have been better.