Bacon Is Hard Work, But So Damn Worth It

Today, I took a bunch of pics of the baconator in action. The baconator is incredible, but sometimes smoking in the the tandoor can be a little bit tricky. It is hard to maintain a proper, consistent level of smoke. When it works, though, it works like my liver after a night of heavy drinking. You can see an example below.






The bacon is hooked up all S & M like to the baconator...



...and dropped into the tandoor.

The bacon smokes like a crowd at a Dave Matthew's concert and looks like this when done:

Fan-dang-tastic!!!!

There you have it kids.....house smoked bacon and all its porkgasmic goodness!!!!

The Virtues of Housemade Bacon

For a while now, we have been making our own bacon at Fire. I know that many places in town make bacon in house, but ours is special for 2 reasons.

1st, we have the real deal "baconator".
This bad boy was fashioned out of a deep hotel pan. My man, Dave "Geez" Treaster, then drilled holes and hung five rows of painter's hooks in the pan.

2nd, we have a tandoor oven in which to smoke our deliciousness. I, being the genius that I am, forgot to take a separate pic of the tandoor. So, if you don't know anything about them, go HERE. This monstrous beast is perfect for smoking bacon and does a better job than most commercial smokers.

For our bacon, we adjusted the basic cure recipe(the one with dextrose instead of sugar) from Michael Ruhlman's Charcuterie book. Before curing the bacon, I brush each slab of pork belly with copious amounts of good ol' Knob Creek bourbon. The bourbon accentuates the smokiness of the finished product.

After curing for 10 days(7 just ain't enough), we get the tandoor nice and smoky. Then, we hang the slabs(5 at a time) from the painter's hooks and invert the pan over the tandoor's round opening.

The bacon is then smoke until it reaches the desired temp(155 F.). After its done, we brush it with maple syrup from Snake Hill Farms. Their grade A Amber is incredible with the bourbon soaked bacon.

The finished product looks like this:


The white spots are just a little bit of congealed porky goodness, not mold. Bacon looks good chillin next to the latest issue of Meatpaper magazine.

We are about to start working on small batch artisan bacon that we will sell through the restaurant as "private label". I'm just waiting on Doug to finally purchase a cryovac machine, so we can finally insert ourselves into the 21st century.


All this being said, I think we have the best bacon in town. Thanks Tandoor!!!!

Tasty Bites

Below is a pic of my new favorite BBQ sauce. I experimented a little bit and decided to make a Smoked Dr. Pepper and Strawberry BBQ sauce.

This tasty as it can be sauce was served at a function promoting "minimally invasive surgery" for Rainbow Babies and Children's Hospital in Cleveland.

If anyone wants the recipe, drop me a line.