- [Announcer] Funding for this program was provided in part by the RE Synergy Foundation, content for the sustainable world.

G&C Foods, quality at every turn.

Pittsburgh Spice and Seasoning Company, making life taste better.

The Allen family, Robert, Ashley, Carol, and Fred, and viewers like you.

(upbeat music) - I am the son of a butcher.

You might be a son of a butcher, but I'm the original butcher.

Some ask me, "What is the meat industry to you?"

For me, it starts at a place where my family runs a grocery, butcher shop, and a catering business.

And sure, it's about the business side of things, but for me, at its core, it's a story about relationships.

(funky electric guitar music) Okay, welcome.

Here, today, we're gonna make some bacon.

I'm gonna show you how to lay out some bacons, how we're gonna do some curing processes.

We're gonna do some pork bellies today, specifically, this curing process, we're gonna use no nitrates.

We're gonna kind of walk through these steps and show you how to do that.

Also, we're gonna be doing a beef bacon, and we're gonna be doing a dry rub.

So we got kind of two different curing methods, and then we're gonna include some flavors and some of the things that we like to do here to spice things up.

So, we'll start and fall along.

We'll begin the journey.

So we're gonna start here.

We have a hundred pounds of pork bellies.

We're gonna take these pork bellies and get 'em cured.

To start with the curing process, so we've already, we've trimmed our bacons, they're nice and square, laid out the way we want, and we're gonna start mixing our brine.

So when I start with the brine, I like to take the temperature.

So, this is ice water that we're starting with here.

And it's always the colder the better.

With some of my regular bacon that has the nitrate in it, we'll add a phosphate to that as well to help with the water.

So, when I use that product, I have to make sure I keep it below 40 degrees.

And so, anyways, right now, we're starting out.

I got 35.4 degrees of my ice water.

So, we're gonna begin blending in some of these products.

So to start with here, I got some salt, which is the main ingredient for curing anything.

You have to have the salt for the preservation of the meat.

And a lot of folks will say, I want less salt or reduced salt, but because sometimes you have bacon and hams, and they're just too salty.

But really, you can't just cut back on salt 'cause it's such an important ingredient.

You actually have to counteract that with just adding more sugar into it.

So, while you may think you're getting like, could be like a reduced-salt product that actually has more sugar in it to try to offset that salt.

So, we got salt and we got sugar.

And then this is our yeast extract, which is gonna help to raise the pH of this product to help to keep it, help with the yields and help to keep it tender and juicy.

And this product here is our yeast and spice extract that we're gonna add to it.

And that's gonna help to retain the natural color of the meat and to help to reduce any oxidation that's gonna occur.

So, we're gonna start to mix our brine here.

I'm gonna start with adding this extract, the fruit and spice extract.

And I wanna make sure that I'm dissolving all these products into this water and not allowing it to settle.

So, I'm gonna continue to mix as this is going because I want to keep it in suspension, and make sure it's nice and uniform.

A lot of times, when I'm making these bacons, it's very important on the order of how you add some of these products.

Now, for this product that we're adding, this is a no-nitrate product.

So, we don't have to be so concerned about the priority of these just 'cause some ingredients, they just don't play well together.

They don't mix well together.

So, that's why I started with the spice extract.

Next, I'm gonna go to salt and the rest of the order really doesn't matter.

I just wanna make sure I get that product in there first.

I am gonna add the salt.

(water slushing) I'll add the sugar.

(water slushing continues) As we know in the American diet, we have to have lots of sugar.

Everyone loves the sweetness.

And then I'll add our final product, yeast extract.

(water slushing continues) So, we got our brine mixed up.

It's doing well.

It's in suspension.

Actually, I have this product so cold.

Once added, the salt, it started to actually ice up the outside of this bucket.

So, one of the most important things when you're doing meat, is times and temperatures.

And we wanna keep this product as cold as we can, and that's gonna help us to keep a nice, the nice, red-pink color of our bacon.

Okay, so we're ready to take this into the tumbler.

(bright jazzy music) - [Announcer] The National Pork Producers Council credits the Spanish Explorer, Hernando de Soto, with bringing 13 pigs from Cuba to Old Tampa Bay, Florida, in 1539, thus starting the US pork industry that led to bacon's iconic status.

(bright jazzy music fades) - Okay, so, I wanted to show you guys this brine has been mixed up and sitting there and since we added the salt to the water and the ice, now, we're down to just under 19 degrees.

So, this product, this brine, is super cold going into the product, which will help us to keep our color.

So, now, we're gonna load it into our tumbler.

This is one of the methods that we have.

So we're gonna do a tumble where we've weighed out our hundred pounds of bellies.

We're adding our 10% brine into the product.

We're gonna pull a vacuum, which it actually is gonna, as you pull the vacuum, it actually expands the particles of meat.

And so, that way as we tumble it, we're slowly massaging the liquid and the brine back into the bellies.

And you'll get complete distribution of the brine.

A couple other methods would be an injection method.

We're gonna show you also today a dry-rub method, which is also, that's been around for a long time.

You're just gonna dry rub the bellies and then, give it time, two weeks to 21 days.

And then there's also a submerging method where you could actually just mix up your brine, put your bellies down in like a lug or some sort of container, and then cover it completely with the brine.

And then allow the brine to soak it up.

There's several details for each method on how you wanna do it.

But today, we're gonna focus on the tumble method.

That's my favorite, and it's been the most consistent for us.

So, we're gonna go ahead and start loading these bellies into our vacuum tumbler.

(pork belly clangs) (pork belly thumps) (pork belly thumps) (pork belly thumps) (pork belly thumps) Okay?

Now, we're gonna dump our brine into here.

(brine flowing) (pail tapping) Good, then we're gonna put the lid on to make sure that our seal is nice and tight.

So, it's gonna pull a nice vacuum for us.

In our area, the vacuum tumbling bacon is not, it's my favorite, it's the best.

But this tumbler requires you to, it's mainly used for just bacon and boneless hams.

So, not a lot of meat processors necessarily have a tumbler.

A lot of 'em will still do the injection method or a submersion.

So it is a little bit, to us, we found it's pretty unique to what we're doing here for a small processor.

Large processors, I think, almost exclusively, all use that.

We're gonna pull a vacuum on it.

(vacuum tumbler whirring) (vacuum tumbler whirring continues) And after we pour our 20 units of mercury, we're gonna tumble for two hours, let it rest for an hour, and then tumble for another two hours.

(vacuum tumbler whirring) (bright jazzy music) - [Announcer] According to the National Pork Board, in 1924, Oscar Mayer patented the first packaged, sliced bacon, making it a popular breakfast item through mass production and marketing.

(bright jazzy music fades) - Okay, so, we got our pork bacons tumbling.

And now, I'm gonna show you guys, this is an old method here.

We're just gonna take this dry rub.

I've measured it out, so it's exactly what I need for this is 14-1/2 pounds of beef bacon.

These are actually beef navels.

I just started making beef bacons here a couple, about a year, a year and a half ago.

And it's pretty specific where we're gonna get the cut from.

So, some people will go back into the plate of a beef, and we're really concentrating on the navels.

We got these trimmed up nice, so they're nice and meaty-looking, nice and square, and they'll fit in my slicer perfectly.

So, that's kind of how I have these trimmed up.

So, for what we're doing, we're just gonna take some of this, and we're gonna rub both these bellies down and then we're gonna let it sit for two weeks, and make sure that the brine gets worked the whole way through the product.

This method has been used in our area, our rural area.

A lot of farmers would do a dry-rub method and then they would take these, they would take the bellies, and they would, or hams, they did a lot.

And then they would go put 'em and bury it underneath like the oats of their barn.

Just something, so that way it wouldn't get oxygen, and it wouldn't rot, and they wouldn't have to worry about any of that.

But, so yeah, basically they would just rub 'em and then go bury 'em in the, in the barn or in the haymow, or in the corn, whatever they decided to do, so they couldn't get oxygen and then they just bring 'em back out and then cook it.

Or some guys, I've even heard would just take it and go in there, slice a piece off, and go eat it, and then still leave it where it was.

So, some interesting methods I've also heard of people that would put 'em in like root cellars.

So there would be, say downstairs, some of the old houses would actually have a crick or a stream or water.

And so, it'd stay nice and cool.

So some people would do that.

If you go overseas, you know, some people can do like the dry curing side of it where if you have your humidity and temperature control well enough that, theoretically, a lot of pathogens won't grow, then you can do this too.

So, this is one method.

So, there's kind of the marketing side of this is that there's no water added to this product.

So, it's all just the natural juices that exist.

So, you're not gonna get as much yield out of a product like this.

The reason I actually like the tumbling method the most is because I can turn it around pretty quickly.

I can have bacons cured in four hours.

And so, it's very efficient, especially in the high-paced world that we live in now.

So, yeah, I'm gonna get these rubbed up real nice and then I'm gonna take 'em, make sure they sit.

I'm gonna make sure any of this extra is added into, I'm actually gonna put these in a bag and vacuum seal 'em and keep 'em in the cooler.

I'm gonna label it, you know, do not smoke until two weeks from today's date, so that way, I don't prematurely do it and have the bacons not be completely cured through.

So, that's it for our dry curing.

Now, we're gonna show you a little bit about how we add value to our other bacons, while putting a rub and putting our own little twist on it.

(bright jazzy music) Okay, we got our bacons have come out of the brine.

They've been brining in the tumble here.

And so, they're ready to go.

But we're not satisfied with just taking our bacons and hang them in the smokehouse and smokin' 'em.

Yeah, we do that, but we also have some specialty flavors.

As a matter of fact, we have over nine different flavors of bacons we do.

And I think, probably, one of our strangest, Bryson, what do you think is our strangest bacon we make?

- Pumpkin bacon.

- The pumpkin bacon.

We do a pumpkin bacon in the fall.

We also do a marshmallow bacon now, and that one really kind of messes with people's heads.

But today, I'm gonna show you, we have, this is our honey-glazed bacon that we're gonna do.

This is a special recipe that we do.

It's got brown sugar, white sugar, and then it's got ham glaze to it.

This middle one, we're gonna show you is gonna be our pepper bacon.

And then Bryson's gonna be doing a maple-chipotle rub bacon.

So, we do all our bacons similarly.

They're all cured and tumbled at the same process.

We do have a dry-rub process, the bacon that we market separately.

We also have the beef bacon, which is dry rubbed and then no-nitrate.

But other than that, we have our base recipe for our bacons and then we're just adding some extra value to it, adding some extra flavor to it.

So, when we do that process, the meat side is the stickiest side, but we actually wanna start with the fat side of our bacon first.

And we're gonna get pretty generous with our rubs and our seasonings here.

I'm gonna start us off with this honey-ham glaze, and then we're just gonna sprinkle it on.

You have to think that when you're slicing the bacon, for us, we slice it at six millimeters thick, which would be right around about a, less than a quarter inch, would probably be more like an eighth-inch thick.

So, we get pretty generous.

You're only getting that much, that little bit of flavoring on the outside of your bacon.

But when you're cooking that in your pan or in the oven, well, that can make a difference of flavor.

And in the case of the marshmallow bacon we make it, actually, when you cook that marshmallow bacon in the oven, it just makes your whole house smell like you're having a roasted marshmallow on fire.

So, we did the fat side first.

We're gonna flip it over, and we'll finish rubbing this on here.

We wanna have complete coverage on all the sides and the ends 'cause we sell a lot of flavored bacon ends that people can use for different things.

One of my favorites is to take them bourbon bacon ends, and we actually mix it in one of our hamburgers, and we do what we call, black diamond, bourbon bacon burger.

And that just, you just get so many different flavors.

So we have, it's a fun addition to have these flavored bacons and add 'em to an entree.

Okay?

And then from here, we're gonna hang it.

I always hang mine from the flank side because the way the flank is, I could show you on this one here a little bit better.

This is a nice square end, and it hangs pretty nice and square, but if I was to hang it from this side, then this side is kind of tapered off and then I'm gonna have a bunch of bacon ends till it slices even.

So what I'm actually trying to do is take this flank side and pull it.

So, this bacon's gonna remain nice and square when we hang it.

And these are our bacon hangers.

So, you'll just stick that right through the bacon bellies, and we'll hang it up like this.

And you got a nice, nice rectangular piece there, and we're not gonna hardly have any ends there when we do this up.

So, Bryson, why don't you go ahead and do the maple chipotle.

So, for some of our flavored bacons, you end up with, you kind of are pairing it up with your meals.

So, for instance, with our honey glaze, it's a more of a sweet flavor.

So, I think, people really appreciate taking that product.

And if we're gonna have pancakes and syrup or waffle, something where you're gonna add a little bit of syrup, you're gonna get that sweet flavor.

With Bryson's here, he's doing this maple chipotle.

So, you could use that, that would be a nice, so you have the maple, which is nice and sweet, and you get a little bit of that heat.

So, that's a nice product to actually put with, you could be doing like BLTs or maybe you wanna put some of that on your salad.

So you're gonna get a little bit of that, like sweet and heat.

Yeah, this maple chipotle one, that's been a really good hit.

We did one that was similar to that.

It was, we called it a Southwest spicy, which is basically an Andouille sausage seasoning sprinkled on it, but it was a little bit hot.

But right now, the sweet and the heat is the trend right now.

So, we will go with that.

If that's what people are wanting, we'd be more than happy to do up our bacon just like that for 'em.

We'll go ahead and get this one ready with the hanger.

We're gonna hang it on that flank end.

That's our nice flavored maple chipotle bacon.

(plastic crinkling) Another one I'm gonna show you here, this is just gonna be our pepper.

You mind flipping that over?

And again, we're gonna be pretty generous with our black pepper here.

And this is a part of the job that I really enjoy just coming up with different flavors, adding a new twist to it, and surprising my customers whenever they drive by our store and say, "What in the world are you making now?"

And you gotta make sure that Bryson doesn't put his fingers underneath when he sticks 'em through, so he doesn't have his finger on the other side of that bacon hanger.

Okay, now, we're gonna move to Bryson's favorite, and that's the bourbon bacon.

(bright jazzy music) (cows mooing) (bright jazzy music fades) Okay, now, this is time for our favorite and best, really our customer fan favorite, and our award-winning bourbon bacon.

So, now, it's time to bourbonize.

So, people kind of ask, "What is a bourbon bacon?

What makes it unique?"

And, no, it's not because I took a shot of bourbon and decided to make bacon.

It's because this is a sweet bourbon marinate.

I originally started making this with my beef sticks, and my customers really loved the flavor.

That was the hot item at the time.

And I said, "Hey, dad, why don't we just put this on bacon?"

I mean, why not?

That's kind of my go-to.

It's more like, tell me why I can't do this and then I'll try to figure out how to make it happen.

Bryson's gonna help me get this, I kind of make this bourbon, I make it into a paste and so it doesn't go on dry.

If there's one thing I don't like about the bourbon bacon, would be, one, would be slicing it because it likes to smear and make a mess.

And two is, I don't necessarily like the way it looks in the packaging for the customers.

'Cause I don't get to show off that nice, bright red bacon color that we have.

But when they cook it up, and they taste the flavor of it, customers love it, and they come back for more.

So, with this being kind of almost like a liquid form on top of the bacon, I try to make a nice paste on it, so that way whenever it's cooking and throughout the smoking process that it doesn't all drip off.

So I make it real thick and real pasty.

This is our bourbon bacon ready to go on the rack and getting ready for the smoker.

(rack rattling) (metal door clangs) Okay, now, we're ready to go in the smoker.

I'm gonna start it, and we'll see you in a few hours with some finished product.

Okay, now, our product's done, and it's been cooked and smoked, and we're ready to take it into the cooler.

So, we're gonna make sure this product is chilled correctly in the cooler.

And then we're gonna temper it and get it ready for slicing.

Boy, did that bacon turn out nice.

This regular bacon is real nice color to it.

And the bourbon bacon that cooked on that glaze that we put on it yesterday, cooked on perfectly.

So that'll stay nice.

(bright jazzy music) (bright jazzy music continues) (lid thuds) (slicer whirring) (bright jazzy music continues) (bright jazzy music continues) (bright jazzy music continues) Hey, we're back with another episode of "Son of a Butcher."

I'm A.J.

O'Neil.

- That's "Son of a Butcher."

(A.J.

laughing) (bright jazzy music continues) - And that's all folks (laughing) (bright jazzy music ends) - [Announcer] Funding for this program was provided in part by the RE Synergy Foundation, content for the sustainable world.

G&C Foods, quality at every turn.

Pittsburgh Spice and Seasoning Company, making life taste better.

The Allen family, Robert, Ashley, Carol, and Fred, and viewers like you.