Baaaacon

The next part of processing the lambs is the making of the bacon.  We cut the belly meat from all 3 lambs, which yields 6 slabs of bacon, 10# 5 oz....

The first thing I did was trim off 5 oz of fat to make it an even 10#....much easier for calculating the cure.  We dry cure our bacon using pink salt, kosher salt, and brown sugar....

For 10 pounds of bacon we use 2 teaspoons pink salt...and one pound each brown sugar and kosher salt.  The dry cure MUST be thoroughly mixed to disperse all of the pink salt evenly.

Then the dry cure is rubbed evenly into each slab of meat.  You have to be sure and get into all the folds and on each of the ends to coat every inch of the meat....and use every speck of the cure.  Then the meat is placed in a non-metallic container, covered, and put into the fridge.  Every day I will rotate the slabs and be sure that the cure is evenly distributed.  It should be ready for smoking this weekend.

I'll follow up on this as it progresses....