This recipe and step-by-step process for making your own delicious bacon at home comes from long-time Zero Carb practitioner Rose Nunez Smith.

 

STEP ONE: Grate fresh nutmeg for the spice rub mixture.

STEP TWO: Aye, now there’s the rub! Garlic, juniper berries, bay leaves, thyme, coarse-ground black pepper and salt. It’s important to mix everything together very well. I use the pink curing salt that has nitrites in it, a.k.a. saltpeter. [Editor’s note: Many companies that make “natural” bacon use celery powder instead of chemical nitrites in the curing process because it is high in naturally occurring nitrites. So that might be an alternate possibility.]

STEP THREE: The meat! The meat! Ten pounds of pork belly.

STEP FOUR: Preparing to divide the pork belly into two sections to fit into my glass baking pans.

STEP FIVE: Rub the spice mixture thoroughly into the pork belly before placing into the glass pans. This one still has a little ways left to go — you want the whole thing to be covered with the spice & salt mixture.

STEP SIX: Wrap the rubbed pork in plastic bags to keep it soaking in the brine that will form as it marinates in the spice & salt mixture. I allow it to marinate like this in the refrigerator for a good week, turning it over every other day.

STEP SEVEN: Once the marination is complete, I rinse the spice & salt mixture off the pork belly and let it dry out in the refrigerator for a day or two. Then, I have my husband smoke it to perfection! It is smoked at a low temperature for 2-4 hours, or until it reaches an internal temperature of 150 degrees.

STEP EIGHT: Slice up the finished product as needed.

STEP NINE: Eat it for breakfast or any other time you feel like it.

Bon Apetite!