Dehydrating Bacon

Dehydrating Bacon

This is quite a time consuming job and not something that can be done quickly. So allow plenty of time to complete the task.

Good bacon is not cheap and it all seems to be waterlogged. The manufacturers do this to bump up the weight so that they get more money from us. Cooking this water logged bacon very dangerous.

Hot fat and oil as you know just do not mix and when this waterlogged bacon hits a hot pan it starts spitting like mad.

Seriously I can’t wait till we can raise our own pigs again and process our own bacon and hams.

Okay back to the process itself. The actual process is very basic, but the prep is very time consuming but well worth the effort.

First you need to pick really lean bacon as the fat will not dehydrate and must all be removed.  Also the fat is what will send your dried product rancid and unusable so great care must be taken here.

Please do not discard the fatty parts off the bacon, as they make and awesome base for soups such as my Country Style Bacon & Potato Soup a la Tina that I shared some time ago.

Some bacon manufacturers now a days use a weird solution for doing their so called curing of their bacon and it is like a cross between a gel and slime.

If you strike this, then simple wash the bacon in cold water, and then drain it all really well in a strainer at first, and then on paper towels. Pat as dry as possible to make sure all the water is removed.

Remove all the fatty bits. This is essential and you must ensure that all the fat is removed.

I found that a pair of kitchen scissors worked best for doing this part of the task at hand. This is a good thing to do while sitting watching TV for a bit. Remember to put all the fatty bits aside and freeze them in useable amounts for making soups or flavouring red cabbage when cooking it (this is so delicious!).

Check that the meaty bacon pieces are nice and dry and then place them on your dehydrator trays and dehydrate until crispy dry. Check them after about 8 hours or so. I found that even though I had removed all the fat there was a lot of fat extracted from the meat during the drying process.

This proves that the bacon today is not cured naturally but instead is pressure cured which pushes a lot of the fat into the meat itself. This is not at all healthy for us.

To remove the fat from the dehydrating bacon, I just used paper towels to dab the fat droplets off and then continued dehydrating until it was perfectly crispy dry.

At this point you have the two most time consuming issues out of the way;  firstly removing all the fat and then part way through dehydrating, removing the fat that comes out of the meat itself. Trust me it is worth this effort.

Mine took almost two days to dry out totally but I did not have my dehydrator heat too high as this was my first attempt at doing this.

Once the bacon is crispy dry, and cold, store it in good tight sealing containers. I do prefer glass for jerky products as I can sterilise them before the meats go into them. Seal and store in a cool dark place.

You can simply reconstitute for using on pizzas or whatever or you can powderise the dried bacon to use as flavouring for stocks, soups, stews, casseroles etc.

Please note here that if you are intending to fry the bacon once it is reconstituted that you make sure to pat it perfectly dry before it goes into the hot pan. We do not want anyone getting burnt by hot spitting fats now do we?

What I love about dehydrating meat and bacon is that you can store it safely for years and years without the need for refrigeration of freezing.

I have about 40 pound of meat that I am aging that I want to marinate and dehydrate again some too in the next month or so for my next project and to help build up my jerky supplies. This next batch is going to be so tender.

Good luck with the bacon and please do remember that although it takes a bit to prepare the bacon for doing this, that the results are astonishing and so worth all the effort.