Makin Bacon

[TnAndy]

So Tuesday last week, killed one of the pigs. Got everything cut/wrapped and in the freezers. Put the bellies and hams in crocks of brine to cure on Friday. Pulled the cured bacon out Wed, and put whole slabs in freezer because it's easier for me to slice if partially frozen. Pulled them out early to thaw some, then mid morning began to slice and wife oven broils slices before we can up.
27 lbs of slabs, minus 5.5lbs of trimmed off fat, minus 2.5lb of fatback meat to cook with beans (when the slab gets down to so close to the slicer blade, I quit and cut into bean meat pieces.

Pint jar holds about 8 oz (by weight) of par-broiled bacon, which is enough for 4 servings or 2 meals for two of us. 27lbs of raw slab bacon reduces to 16 pint jars of 8oz each or about 8lbs of 3/4 cooked bacon.

Front bowl keeping to season beans, back bowl discarded.

Packed in jars, ready for lids and go in the canner.

 

[user.69169]

You almost back to 1930s when bacon first available sliced up and packed in jars by Beachnut got done smoking it. Stayed good in de jar for a while widout refrigeration long as lid was screwed on tight. Before dat butcher run every couple days fer yer bacon. Custom sliced to your order.

 

[TnAndy]

Got the idea about canning when I saw a commercial can of Yoder's Bacon

10yr shelf life (not an issue around here, I assure ya.... ), equal to 3lbs of uncooked bacon, and it tastes GREAT !

Canned bacon at PHG

So we learned to can ours too. One thing we've found is trying to keep bacon in the freezer, it tends to get rancid in about a year because of all the fat on it. Pre-cooking it, we get rid of a lot of the fat before it goes in the jar.

 

[user.69169]

Thinkin on it, sure hope it wasn't this talented pig.
Blue Christmas with Porky Pig - YouTube

 

[tallyho8]

Mmmmmmm, it's baconnnnnnnn.

Porky was unusual, most singers don't stutter while singing.

Country singer Mel Tillis was famous for his stutter - YouTube
Mel Tillis tells a story - YouTube

 

[user.69169]

Now gotta worrie bout Kermit.. If dat Miss Piggy he gonna probably cry his eyes out, maybe dehydrate right der on lilly pad.

Pass de bacon please..

 

[oosik]

Bear with me here, TnAndy. In my years in AK - shot and butchered my fair share of moose ( 23+ ). Never a pig. The picture - jars ready for the canner. Looks like the meat is wrapped in paper towels. There must be a good reason for all that.

 

[om21braz]

Grandfather told me they would can sausage, never heard of canned bacon though. Back in his day when processing a hog he said the only thing not kept/used for something was the squeal LOL!

Is that waxed paper you are wrapping in? I know some do country ham that way to keep it from sticking together. I've had to deal with that before - trying to peel apart 75 lbs. of center slices against one another is a chore.
Thanks for the post and info!

 

[om21braz]

One thing we've found is trying to keep bacon in the freezer, it tends to get rancid in about a year because of all the fat on it. Pre-cooking it, we get rid of a lot of the fat before it goes in the jar.

Did not know that either - got some in the freezer now I will need to check on.

 

[TnAndy]

Bear with me here, TnAndy. In my years in AK - shot and butchered my fair share of moose ( 23+ ). Never a pig. The picture - jars ready for the canner. Looks like the meat is wrapped in paper towels. There must be a good reason for all that.

That's a whole herd of moose there oosik ! White tail deer is the biggest game animal here I've shot....but they can up nice too.

One whole deer in jars:

The paper we use for bacon is parchment paper. The paper allows you to pull the whole roll out, remove enough strips for a meal, then roll it back up and return to the jar. We then screw a plastic lid on the jar, put the jar in the house freezer part of the refrigerator, and flip the note on the side of the fridge to "Bacon Yes" so we remember there is bacon in the freezer and not to open another jar from the pantry. Next time we need bacon, the remainder of that jar gets used first, and the note gets flipped to "Bacon No". If you didn't use parchment paper (which doesn't fall apart like paper towels would, or dissolve from the high heat of canning like wax paper would), the bacon would be in a big lump in the jar and you'd have to fry the whole contents at one time...more than the two of us would eat in a serving. I get about 24 strips in a roll. They are thicker cut than normal store bacon, but also shorter. My slicer apparently doesn't have the carriage travel that commercial ones do to get the size strips you find in store bought packages, so my strips come out 7-8" before cooking.

Our first attempt at canning, we simply put the bacon in raw, rolled in the paper, and processed (60 min pints/90 quarts @15psi). The result was bacon that crumbled up into little pieces...good for salad topping, not for strips.

Next attempt, I fried up the bacon to about 3/4 done...while it held together fine doing that, and you get strips to finish frying, it tends to turn black after a while from the cast iron frying pan I used turning the grease dark after repeated frying, as in the photo below.

Rolling in parchment paper before going in the jar:

SO, my brilliant wife suggested one year we put it on broiler pans in the oven so the grease would drip down in the pan from repeated loads on top, and that worked great. I slice, she loads the pans and cooks the bacon about 1/2-3/4 done, pulls a pan out, she sticks another in (got 3 pans), she piles the semi-cooked bacon on a flat tray with layer of paper towels between pan loads to absorb excess grease. I'm rolling and stuffing jars from the cooled pans, and loading the canner.

Takes us about 4 hours to work up the bacon from one pig....and about another 4 hours to clean up, because bacon grease tends to get EVERYWHERE.....ahahahaaa

Pan of oven broiled bacon in front, un-cooked on cookie sheets in the back to be broiled.

 

[TnAndy]

Grandfather told me they would can sausage, never heard of canned bacon though. Back in his day when processing a hog he said the only thing not kept/used for something was the squeal LOL!

Is that waxed paper you are wrapping in? I know some do country ham that way to keep it from sticking together. I've had to deal with that before - trying to peel apart 75 lbs. of center slices against one another is a chore.
Thanks for the post and info!

Parchment paper.....but for a similar reason....so you don't end up with a whole lump of bacon in a jar. This way you can pull the roll out, take off the amount you want for a meal, put the rest back in the jar, which now has to go in the freezer (or fridge if you plan to use it in the next week or so) until the next use. Parchment paper holds up nice in the canning process, where waxed paper would not. But waxed paper works for freezing as you'd noted.

 

[TnAndy]

Now gotta worrie bout Kermit.. If dat Miss Piggy he gonna probably cry his eyes out, maybe dehydrate right der on lilly pad.

Pass de bacon please..

Cool ads there (removed). From the days when refrigeration wasn't as common I'd guess.

 

[oosik]

Thanks for your answer - TnAndy. Boy - you do a whole lot of canning!!!

 

[EddieWalker]

I really enjoy your posts and hope to be able to do what you do. You and your wife are a huge inspiration for me!!!

 

[tallyho8]

Last night my wife cooked up a batch of white beans with the bacon seasoning like you show in your first post. That makes the beans incredibly good. It's too bad that I have to drive all the way to the Ozarks to find good bacon pieces like that.

 

[TnAndy]

Thanks for your answer - TnAndy. Boy - you do a whole lot of canning!!!

We really do a lot of canning, though since I built wife a hoop house some years back, she keeps us in a lot of fresh stuff by triple cropping per year things like green beans/etc. Before, we'd plant one bigger crop per year outside and can most of them at one time.

A run of green beans from years past:

All American brand canner will hold 19-20 quart jars at a time + the smaller stove top one (old National brand inherited from her mom) will hold another 7 quart jars, so we can run a bunch at one time.

Photo of our canning pantry today. It's out in the "auxiliary" kitchen where the walk-in cooler is located and we do our meat processing. Stay nice and cool to store stuff....reading 45 degrees this morning with outside air in the low 30's.

 

[TnAndy]

I really enjoy your posts and hope to be able to do what you do. You and your wife are a huge inspiration for me!!!

You, no doubt like a lot of folks, have a whole bunch to do with just day to day living. Funny thing is once you retire, the work load doesn't stop....it merely shifts from doing less for other people and more for yourself.

BTW....you're petting about 30-40lbs of bacon there !

 

[TnAndy]

Last night my wife cooked up a batch of white beans with the bacon seasoning like you show in your first post. That makes the beans incredibly good. It's too bad that I have to drive all the way to the Ozarks to find good bacon pieces like that.

Yep...good eating, huh ? That's why we keep the trimmings off squaring up a pc of bacon for the slicer, and that last pc before your finger get into the slicer.

 

[user.69169]

Old fashion butcher paper like dis probably cost less den parchment.

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Comes either on roll or precut sheets.

Should be good to put in oven too. You can cook bacon & eggs in brown paper sack next to campfire if you careful and don't want scrambled eggs.

Big pressure canner looks like ones Amishmen use.. One I know south of me now runs 8 x 12 walk in used to ride around on truck. ThermoKing approved because uses no electric. Plan is to add couple more, maybe freezer for community.

 

[civilian]

Dumb city brought up boy here with a dumb question. What part of the pig is used for bacon. I have cut up deer for meat, and buy a side of cow from a butcher, but never thought about where bacon comes from. Glad you guys got a laugh on me. LOL. Jon