Cherry Smoked Bacon (or more product placement than Apple in Starbucks)

Warning: This post features oodles of product crap and not one of the product-producing bastards gave me a nickel.

For xmas, the wife gave me a Smoke Daddy smoker offset box. A well-machined bit of aluminum and steel made to fit into a chamber with hand-tight fittings via a 7/8" dia hole. The smoke comes from wood and today I'm using Traeger smoking pellets hoping to get a longer smoking session without having to do more than sip beer and stare at it. I used plain old chips off the shelf, but they burned too quickly. The pellets I got for just under a buck a pound were just what this rig needed.  One charge of 200 grams of pellets goes for 3-4 hours.  The line into this thing (that blue line) is hooked to a small aquarium pump. This is necessary to keep the combustion going, the lit pellets will suffocate without a perk of air. I'll try slowing the flow of air to get a few more hours out of it.

So that's it, see below for a few action shots. I prepped my pork belly according to Saucisson Mac's bacon manifesto and tossed it on.  I especially like Saucisson Mac's thoughts on a solution brine rather than a solid/surface salting, more uniform and faster to get the belly cured.

The stainless steel cylinder that extends my kettle into a pseudo Smoky Mountain isn't sold anymore.  However, the smoke from this thing could be pumped into a wooden box or pretty much any chamber you can drill a hole into, the receiving chamber isn't hot.

I put the pellets in and lit it with a brief zap of a propane torch like the instructions suggested, capped it off and started the aquarium pump.

My pork belly, about 2.5 lbs.  This is where economies of scale scream "MORE BACON."  The brining of a pork belly is easy; that chamber has two racks of space and given how fast I gave away the last batch, I should've made pounds and pounds.  Fear not, you may see xmas gifts that bear some resemblance.

After searching throughout Columbus, I gave up and found my cherry pellets at Amazon (isn't that sad, to get a fuel source from Amazon?)  They are a nicely manufactured product though, perfect for this type of apparatus.

See through the door?  That's me sipping whiskey and strumming my banjo.

fin, tomorrow's breakfast will be special.