Beef Bacon BLT! | Chuds BBQ

What is going on everybody? Welcome back to Chud's Barbecue. My name is Bradley Robinson. And today, I'm gonna show you how I made this. Beautiful, delicious, smoky, beefy, fatty, amazing. Beef bacon made from scratch. Turned into some absolutely beautiful beef BLTs. Coming up. This is some meat. Pat it dry. And what I got here is a beautiful beef belly. Got this from my friends over at Porter Road. Not sure of anywhere else you can get a beef belly, but I've been wanting to try one of these for a long time. And as you can see, we've got a lot of marbling and a lot of fat, so it should work out perfectly for what we're doing today. And today, we're taking a stab at some beef bacon, which is something I've had many a times, but never actually made myself. And in my experience, beef bacon is not really as good as pork bacon, but I've never tried it with high quality meat with some actual smoke on it and made it to the best of my ability. So, taking a look at this thing, there's really not much we have to do. It's pretty well trimmed up. You know, part of me wants to take down some of this fat on this side, which I might just do a little bit, but you know, fat is half the reason we like bacon so much. So, trimming it off seems a little counterintuitive, but I'm also kind of looking at this piece. Grain is clearly running this way, so at the end of the day, when I slice this up, I'll have to go this way if we want to go against the grain. But I'm not sure if that really matters for bacon, but if we look at it, fat, meat, where on this side, it's kind of fat, meat, fat, meat. So, try to remember that in like a week. I'm gonna zip this down just a little bit, just because I'm here. And beef belly is a pretty interesting cut, because as you can see, it's incredibly well marbled. And I think if we cook this to tenderness, it might just be a little bit too rich, you know? Beef ribs are already getting pretty close in that regard, and this would be even more fatty. So, curing it and slicing it thin probably is the best thing to do with a cut like this, which is, in fact, the next step. So, to get this cured, first thing I'm gonna do is weigh it out. 1,907 grams. Then I'm gonna bust out some bacon cure. If you check out any of my bacon videos, I made this in the very first one in a big batch. Lasts for a really long time, because it's just salt, sugar, and some pink curing salt. I think I threw some garlic and maybe some herbs in there as well. And simply enough, I'm gonna take the weight of this meat and add 3% cure, which is about 57 grams. So, I've got the scale teared out. We're just gonna keep adding this until we get to 57 grams. That was too much. Boop, perfect. Now, all we need to do is make sure this thing is completely covered, because this is an equilibrium brine, so we want all of this cure on this meat. So, I'm gonna try not to spill it all over the table. Just getting all nice and mixed around. And if you haven't made your own bacon before, I highly recommend it. It's a really easy, hands-off process. It does take a while, but it's mostly inactive, and you can flavor your cure however you like, you know? Throw some herbs in there, throw some black pepper in there, make a spicy bacon, the world is yours. Again, this one's pretty simple. Just salt, sugar, garlic, pretty basic cure. Beautiful. And at this stage, I would ideally vac seal this, but I think it's a little too big for my chamber vac, so I'm just gonna wrap it up in some plastic. And just like that, all wrapped up. So now, into the fridge this goes to cure for the next five to seven days. And periodically, I'm gonna come out and flip it over to make sure that cure is penetrating evenly into this meat, but really, all we gotta do is wait. So, we'll see you in a week. This video's brought to you by Z Biotics. 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And just like that, nicely cleaned up. Gotta say it's looking pretty good. And at this point you can do pretty much whatever you want. You know, you can throw some rub on this thing, some black pepper, some herbs, whatever you want your bacon to taste like. And I'm really tempted to throw some sweet cheeks, which is our maple rub that we make on there would be perfect for some bacon. But because I've never made beef bacon before, I'm just gonna keep this as simple as possible so we can really get a clean comparison to what regular bacon tastes like. So that being said, it's time to turn this cured beef belly into bacon. So we gotta get this thing on the smoker. We're gonna be cooking on the Pella grill today for a good old fashioned cold smoke. Got the Yoder YS640 over here. And in the corner over here, I got a pellet tube full of some post oak pellets. And you could do a traditional cold smoke or a little even hotter of a smoke if you want. But because this is fully cured, I want to get as much smoke flavor on it as possible. So I'm going for a cold smoke today. So the grill stays off. Just got the smoke tube in there. We're gonna light it up. Beautiful. And again, the smoker is staying off. So we're not gonna really generate much heat, but we should get a lot of nice smoke coming out of this thing. So I'm gonna shut it down and let it go for probably a couple hours. And while we wait, let's go ahead and get our bread started. So I'm gonna be going into our stand mixer with some warm water. One egg, boop. And our yeast. And get that mixed up to break up that egg a little bit. Next, going in our sugar. Quick little mix. Our bread flour. And our kosher salt. And mix that till it all comes together. And once a shaggy dough has come together, we're gonna go into some Wagyu beef tallow. Beautiful. And now we're gonna mix this for like six to 10 minutes. And just like that, fully kneaded, looking nice, pulling away from the bowl nice and clean. So out it comes. Grease up this bowl a little bit. And out comes this dough, feeling very nice. Little bit sticky, but that's fine. Form it into a nice ball. And in we go. I'm gonna cover this in plastic wrap and let it rise for the next hour to hour and one half. One hour later. As you can see, we have doubled in size. And then some. Looking really nice. And just a little boop. But out it comes. And I'm just gonna go ahead and punch all the air out of this. Feeling a little sticky. Might have to grab some flour. It's been a humid summer here in Texas. Not mad about it. Bugs are chirping. I'm gonna go ahead and roll this out just to pop any of the bigger bubbles in there. Giving us a tighter crumb on this bread at the end of the day. Very satisfying dough to work with, though. Tell you that much. And not quite simply. I'm just gonna roll it up like a little log. Nice and tight. Beautiful. Pinch all these seams together. And just make a nice log. It's the same size as our intended loaf pan, which I'm gonna spray down. And then in we go. Oh, it looks so weird. And now I'm gonna let this rise up for another little bit. Throw some plastic wrap on top yet again until it has risen up just a little bit over the edge of this pan here. Probably should only take like 30 minutes. 30 minutes later, we got some really nice puffage on this second rise. Plastic comes off, looking really nice. So now into a 350 degree oven this goes for about 30 minutes until it's reading an internal temperature of about 200 degrees and looking like a loaf of bread. And just like that, out of the oven. Looking pretty good. Came out of that loaf pan incredibly easy and a little bit lopsided because I'm not very good at making bread. But smells good, looks good. Nice color on there. Still got it on this wire rack. We're gonna let it cool down for a little bit. Meanwhile, over here on the pellet grill, bacon has been smoking all day long. Getting some really nice color on there. Got a little pork belly down there too just for good measure. But yeah, looking nice and smoky but probably not reading too high internally because there's no heat in here except for the 110 degree day we've got going on right now. That's not true. It's in the 90s. It's actually quite pleasant, especially for a Texas summer. But for those curious, we're rocking about 100 degrees internal. So we need to bring that up to about 150. So I'm gonna fire this pit up probably to only like 150. It's probably not even gonna get fully up to temp before this thing gets fully cooked through but smoke tube is still smoking as you can see. So we're gonna get even more flavor on there. So on it goes. Pit is coming up to temp. I can hear those pellets dropping. And of course you can do this on whatever kind of cooker you got. I'm gonna throw this little probe guy in there. Duty full. That way we can keep an eye on the internal temp. And as soon as it comes up to 150 degrees internal, we'll pull them off. And just like that, it's been like an hour or so. I was rocking this pit at 200 degrees but finally came up to temp about 150. Looking good. A lot of good color on there. So off this comes. Ow. Yoink. Looking good. Plumped up quite a bit. Nice and thick. Again, beautiful color on both of these. Smoke tube really did its job. Looking nice and mahogany like. But I'm gonna pop these in the fridge for a little bit to get nice and cold. And then we're gonna slice them up and see how they came out. All right y'all, this bacon has been chilling in the fridge for the last couple hours and it is looking pretty good. I probably should let this cool overnight but the schedule just doesn't allow for that. So we're making some late night BLTs. But gotta say, pretty happy with how this came out. Beautiful color on there. Clearly smoked, feeling nice and firm, nicely cured. And now all we gotta do is get some slices out of this bad boy. And I could bust out the meat slicer right now but I'm just gonna go by hand. Ooh. Starting by squaring this bad boy up a little bit. Is that the correct direction of grain to be cutting? I do not know. Not well versed in beef bacon. Clearly. Ooh, juicy. Busting into it though, looking good. Looking really fatty. Good marbling on that meat section though. Trying to look at this thing and figure out which way I should be cutting it. The grain seems to be running in this direction which means I think I should be cutting it this way. I mean, let me know what you guys think down below. But that looks like a lot of fat and that's usually an indication of cutting the wrong direction. So I'm gonna switch sides and go from this angle. Oh yeah, that looks a little bit more like bacon. Yeah, that looks a little bit better. I think we found the correct grain structure. Look at that, that's some good looking beef bacon, folks. Not mad about that. I'm going relatively thin but not like as thin as possible, you know what I mean? I love a thin cut bacon but I also love a little bit of thickness. But that looks pretty good. Pretty excited about this. Getting into the meaty side of this bad boy and I gotta say, that looks really good. Nice and juicy, good amount of meat, good amount of fat. And yeah, I got high hopes for this thing but I'm gonna keep slicing away. I mean, just look at it. It looks like pastrami, you know? Maybe I judged this cut too soon by those early cuts because that's looking pretty meaty. Nice shinglage here. All right, this is the last time I'm gonna show you this juicy bacon but I think it's time to cook some of this up. Now, truth be told, I did not expect this to be an entirely pellet grill video. That's just kind of how it worked out because I love the pellet grill for cold smoking meats and it's also one of my favorite ways to cook bacon. So it's already fired up, rocking around 390, 400 degrees and I'm just gonna go ahead and load this bad boy up. Oh my God, that looks so good. I mean, look at that. That's some good looking beef bacon right there, folks. I got this griddle plate in here as well so I might as well get that going, get some smoked bacon, get some griddled bacon. We got the grill down below. We can do whatever we want. So as you can see, we got plenty of beef bacon cooking away. Definitely enough for at least one BLT but yeah, we're just gonna cook this until it's nice and crispy or whatever your bacon desired doneness is and I'll keep you posted. And just like that, off the pit, we got some beautiful looking beef bacon here. Honestly, I'm pretty impressed with how this came out. Nice and crispy. Didn't get too dark. Happy with that. So set this aside because it's time to make a BLT. I wanna eat it. Beautiful looking bread cooled down entirely and now we're just gonna slice it up. See how we did. I mean, look at that. That's a beautiful looking loaf of white bread if I ever did see one. I mean, come on. Love that. Smells fantastic, by the way. If y'all haven't made your own white bread yet, highly recommend it. I'm gonna toast these off real quick. Beautiful. And I only toasted these on one side so we got some nice toast on this side but it's still nice and fluffy on that side. Kind of best of both worlds, you know what I mean? Look at the size of this tomato. It's almost the size of the bread, which is perfect. Beautiful. All right, let's build a sandwich. Should we go toast side out or toast side in? Hmm. Presentation says toast side out but eating experience, I think I could fool Brooke to thinking it's not a toasted sandwich if I did this side out. So that's what we're gonna do. Also, the toast will protect the bread from getting too soggy. So first things first, nice squiggle of some mayonnaise. I like the Japanese stuff. Very flavorful. Get that a nice schmear. Followed by some romaine lettuce. Gotta love that for the crunch. Beautiful. Big ol' honkin' slice of tomato, which of course I'm gonna season with some flaky salt. Gotta love that. Might as well hit that with some black pepper as well. Then I'm gonna go in with a little bit more lettuce. That's why I cut that one in half. Mostly to protect the bacon from that super wet tomato. Also, protect the bread. You know, we don't want anything soggin' out on us. And then we'll go down with some of our beautiful beef bacon, beautiful. Little bit of mayonnaise on the top bun as well. Little extra lettuce, doesn't hurt anything. And then we crown it. Boom, beautiful, BLT. Pretty excited about that. Cross section reveal. What are you doing? Get back in there. And there it is in all its glory, folks. Some beautiful beef bacon made from scratch with some lovely homemade bread and turned into the ultimate beefy BLT. I'm ready to dive on in. And now before we fully dive into the sandwich here, I think I gotta taste some of this bacon by itself because that looks pretty good. You know what I'm saying? I haven't seen much beef bacon lookin' like that. Let's see how we did. Whoa. I mean, yeah, it's really good. Lot of smoked liver on there, but not too overpowering. Salt level is perfect. The curry definitely did its job. The smoke did its work. The only difference, I'd say it's a little bit chewier, but that might be because I sliced it too thick. But all in all, that's a fantastic bite. Oh yeah. Let's go for a crispier piece. Have I been wrong about beef bacon all this time? Maybe. It's salty, it's smoky, it's crispy. It's bacon. But as good as it is, will it be replacing pork bacon in my life? Probably not. You know, this is definitely some of the best beef bacon I've had, but it's just not nearly as delicate and savory as pork bacon. But I'll definitely be doing this again. I will say it does taste a little bit more barbecue than traditional bacon does. I think beef just takes the smoke a little bit differently. And maybe because I'm in Texas and I cook brisket all the time, I'm noticing that. But this is solid. I'm definitely glad I did this, and will be doing it again. Different experience, on the same plane, very similar. Different, but good. Brooke. Would you like to try a beef bacon BLT? Before you do, I want you to try this piece of bacon and tell me what you think. Have you ever had beef bacon before? No, but it does look, I don't know, I'm assuming you cut this, but it looks just like a thick cut of bacon. Okay, it's like bacon. Do you like it more than bacon? Same as bacon, less than bacon? What are you feeling? Where are we at on the bacon scale here? The fat, I don't think, is as melt in your mouth as regular bacon. Yeah, it doesn't crisp up nearly as much. But otherwise, tastes the same. Salinity is there, smokiness is there. I'm kind of with you on that one. The part I love about bacon is we can get it nice and crispy and those little end bits, just the tip just melts in your mouth. Beef fat doesn't do the same thing, you know what I mean? Yeah. It's very good. For that reason though, I say it's under bacon. Yeah, I'm sticking with pork bacon. Although, I'm not mad about having a bunch of this on hand because easy, fun cook. She's been- I've been waiting, I've been hankering. Every year, I think this is our third year in a row we do a BLT in like August or whatever month it is. Let's see. So good. Why is it so good? It's got the crunch, it's got the mayo, it's salty, it's smoky. Freshly baked bread never hurts. Yeah, this bread is top tier. I like that you toasted the inside. I told you I'd fool her. You fooled me? No, not at all. I like that you toasted the inside because if you do the outside as well, it like cuts up the roof of your mouth. It can hurt you. I take back everything I said bad about beef bacon. In BLT form, it is perfect. Because it is a little softer than pork bacon and it has a good mouthfeel to it. It's got a little tug. You're not going to notice much of a difference in the sandwich at all. It's a good BLT right there. It's so good. Glad I made a lot. This is going to be a repeat. We need to make these more. I mean, by we, I mean you, but we need to make these more. It's just such a good sandwich. Beef bacon, successful. Yep, I was starving. Specifically, you had told me you were making BLTs and so I like needed a BLT two hours ago. Oopsie. It's really good. It's got all of the components of a perfect BLT. You've got the ratios just right. You've got the mayo just right. The bacon, salty, crispy. And the freaking tomatoes, just so perky. I love them. Yeah, with a little chew. All right, before I dive into the rest of this sandwich, I think it's time for the official. Well, that's the unofficial taste test. But this is the official taste test. Oh, two bites. I mean, yeah. All right, y'all, and that is it. That's how to make some absolutely fantastic, smoky beef bacon from scratch turned into some beautiful beef bacon BLTs. I highly recommend giving this one a try. If you've never had beef bacon before, it's a completely different experience, but yet very similar to the bacon you know and love. And it's incredibly tasty. It makes for an absolutely perfect summertime BLT. But all that being said, if you enjoyed this video, let me know by hitting that subscribe button. You do not be dropping a like on this video. If you give this recipe a try for yourself, be sure to tag me on Instagram at chudsbarbecue. I'd love to see what y'all are cooking. Big shout out to all the Patreon members. Thank you for supporting Team Chud and allowing me to keep making all these videos. And until the next time I see you, please go cook something outside. Peace.