Over the Christmas season, I make homemade (or house-made, which seems to be more in style now and has been commandeered by restaurants) food gifts. While preparing twenty-five pounds of bacon using my standard recipe I also had purchased a whole shoulder, so I decided to cut off five pounds and make buckboard bacon. No idea why it’s called that, other than the pioneer reference, but a standard bacon cure can be used for any cut of pork and it will taste like bacon. Here’s the recipe for simplicity’s sake.
- 5 lb pork shoulder piece, boneless
- 1/4 cup dark brown sugar
- 1/2 cup dark maple syrup
- 2 tbsp cracked peppercorns
- 2 tsp pink salt
- 1/4 cup kosher salt
Mix everything together and rub all over the pork. Put the pork in a container (tub with a lid, plastic zip bag) and flip it every other day until firm, about seven days. Put the pork uncovered in the fridge for one day and then smoke until an internal temperature of 150 degrees Fahrenheit is reached.
As you can see the pork shoulder has a good amount of fat so it fries crispy like normal pork belly bacon but it’s much meatier.
