smoking bacon

Bacons from the hogs we butchered two weeks ago -- about thirty pounds of smoked and salted meat. We don't tinker much with our salt -- one part brown sugar to four parts kosher salt and a half part of ground black pepper. No Prague powder, as we have found we don't need it.

Bacons are salted one week per inch of thickness, then hung out in the smokehouse over a smoldering fire for two or three days. Afterward we chill them, perhaps even freeze them, so they can go through the slicer without shredding. Up to a point, the colder the bacons, the better they slice.

For Sunday breakfast with a big pan of scrambled eggs, diced roasted new potatoes, oat cakes and a skillet of fried onions, these bellies of pork seem to have found their most sublime expression.