Food Hussy Product Review: The Original Bacon Kit

No this doesn’t look good at all.

I mean – really – who wants to eat all that bacon????? I mean – I know Bob Herzog would! 🙂 How did I MAKE this bacon? Oh yeah – I made it!!!

The folks at The Original Bacon Kit sent me a make-your-own-bacon kit! I was really excited and couldn’t wait to get started!

When you open it up there is a bottle of maple sugar and a bottle of cure along with a pop-in thermometer. It’s a nice presentation for something simple. There’s also a large bag and an instruction sheet.

To start you pour the cure and the (optional) sugar in the bag along with 5 pounds of pork belly. Now – 5 pounds of pork belly isn’t something you can find everywhere! I was able to find it at the meat market in Milford. I think I actually bought 3 pounds because I wasn’t sure how much bacon I needed.

So into the bag it went – with the cure and the maple sugar. Then you leave it in the fridge and flip it over every other day.

Here’s the instruction sheet they sent along with it…

After being in the fridge for 7 days, you put the thermometer in it. Then you can smoke or bake the pork belly. I don’t have a smoker so I baked it.

After that – let it cool in the fridge for 30 minutes…

At that point – you’re ready to fry it up in a pan!

I did find it a little difficult to slice – at least to slice as thin as bacon gets sliced. I cut the slab in half and then sliced it up.

I popped out my griddle and went to town!

This bacon wasn’t near as fatty as what you buy in the store – which has more to do with the pork belly that I bought from the meat market – and it did have a good flavor. It also kept well in the fridge.

So I grabbed some of my favorite bread – Sara Lee Artesano – and made a big ol’ BLT!

I really enjoyed the experience of making bacon since I had never done it before. I can guess that if I were able to smoke it – that would have added a lot of flavor to the bacon as well. All in all it was fun to do but I’m not sure I would keep buying it. The convenience of bacon at the store is pretty nice. But – like I mentioned – being able to see how to take it from pork belly to bacon to MY BELLY was pretty fun.

Thanks to the folks at the Original Bacon Kit for sending this my way.