Some interesting things to consider here. I may have to try my hand at bacon again. I've done it once, and I did it with a wet cure and cold smoking, and I wasn't happy with the results at all. It came out tasting more like a bad pork roast than bacon. I also had issue, in that I frozen it in like 1lb bags and a couple of the bags seemed to go bad in a day or two after defrosting. I may try to get a 2lb piece of pork belly and give a dry cure a try.
For you guys who have done it, do you have any pics of your pre and post cured/smoked pork belly to share? Also where are you getting your pork belly from, what kind of prices are you paying? The one time I tried it, I got it from a local butcher and it ended up costing me like 5 bucks a lb. It had very little fat on it, and by the time I got the skin off it was pretty skimpy (and being my first time trimming it I lost a fair bit of the little fat that was there). It just seemed at that price, by the time I factored in ingredients for the wet cure, wood dust for smoking it, and the time put in, it ended up costing way more than if I just bought some thick cut bacon from the grocery store.
