We didn't have any family/friend commitments this weekend so I decided to get some smoking done while getting small stuff done around the house.


First was around 10 pounds of brisket boudin. I slowly save up any brisket that we don't eat within the week after I cook one and when it's enough I run it through the coarse die on the grinder, mix in 10% cooked liver, lots of rice, and the Cajun trinity. Really like how these come out.


Second was making my own bacon. Bought three pork bellies a week ago and dry brined them in the fridge. Curing salt, regular salt, sugar, sage, and even drizzled some honey in the package with them. Gives the bacon just a hint of sweetness and we really enjoy it, way better than what you buy off the shelf in the store. "Cool" smoked at 150-175 for 4-5 hours and done. Giving some to family and will vac seal the rest in sections so we can use throughout the year.

Drool......

Do you have a recipe for the brisquit boudain without the liver

On my way….

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Do you have a recipe for the brisquit boudain without the liver

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Someone once described boudin as more of a technique than a recipe, so likewise mine tends to vary from batch to batch, but here's what I did on this one.

Take leftover brisket and cube it up, then run through the coarse plate on your grinder. I add 10-15% chicken liver that I cook on a flattop and also run through the grinder but you can certainly omit it. Make about the same amount of cups of rice as you have pounds brisket (this was 10 pounds of meat and I made 8 cups of rice) just cook the rice in a pot with water like normal. Sautee 3 white onions, 4 bell peppers, and 3 bunches of celery, then run through the grinder along with the meat.

Add rice to the ground meat and veggies, use a healthy amount of Cajun seasoning (Tony C's for me), and add about 5% water, then mix it well by hand. Stuff into casings then smoke at 150-175 degrees for the casings to get nice and dried out, took me about 2.5 hours. Remember it's all cooked so there's no specific internal temp you're looking for. Pull off the pit and enjoy, and vacuum seal the rest.

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That looks outstanding. I've wanted to take a crack at making my own bacon. Do you have a recipe for the curing salt, table salt and other herbs?

Also - total cure time before smoking? Would be grateful for a recipe and more specifics on how you did it.

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I use what's called a simple dry brine, just 3% of the meat's weight. All three bellies were around 5 pounds each so I first converted that to grams (multiply by 454g per pound, equals roughly 2270g) and then got the 3% (68g per belly). Pink salt is only going to be about 6g of that 68, the rest you can tune to your liking. Most people would take the remaining 62 grams and do mostly just regular salt, but I did around 38g of salt, 20g of sugar (half brown & half white), and 4g of sage.

After coating the pork bellies with the seasonings I also drizzled some honey on it for an extra hint of sweetness. Left them in ziplock bags in the fridge for a week (most people say 5-7 days to make sure the curing salt does its job) flipping them in their bags every couple of days.

After a week I rinsed them off in the sink and coated the tops with coarse black pepper. Threw them on the pit at the same 150-175 pit temp and let it run until internal temp was 150 which takes about 4-5 hours at those pit temps. Pull it off and let it cool down overnight and then you're ready to slice and fry your own bacon strips. We really like the hint of sweetness you get from the sugar and honey in the brine, definitely recommend giving it a shot.