Pork Belly Bacon Burnt Ends
Yup, you read that right... bacon burnt ends. We make our own bacon and there are always bits that won't fit into the freezer bag before brining. We could make burnt ends, but those are way too sweet for us, so we always just end up smoking those strips with the rest of the bacon and make bacon bits with them. Then it kinda hit me... why not BACON burnt ends?? You don't hear much about those and I'm not sure why, they were amazing! You make them exactly the same way except that you start with brined, raw pork belly. See how WE did it below. You can change it to however it works for you. I will say that next time I would add a little more brown sugar in the glazing part... but otherwise they were perfect!
I'm not going to go into too much detail about the process. If you have questions, you can always google how to make pork belly burnt ends, there's TONS of videos of experts showing you how to make them. We are just showing you what we did different, and a brief description in case you are new to burnt ends.
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We started with pork belly, removed the skin and then we cut strips off the end that would not fit in the freezer bag or in the meat slicer when cooked. We included those cut off strips in the brining process, just like we were going to make bacon with them - because we did (sort of)! If you have a brine that works for you, you should stick with that, but for our bacon brine, for a large freezer bag, we use 2/3 cup water, 2 tsp sea salt, 2 tbsp brown sugar, and 1 to 2 tbsp or our Blackberry Pork Rub. Mix thoroughly and pour into freezer bag with the pork belly. With 2 tsp of sea salt, the finished bacon has a nice hint of salt and is perfectly balanced with the sugar and the Blackberry Rub. Wash the brine off the strips, and grab a sharp knife.
Cut the strips into cubes. They don't have to be perfect or uniform. You should try to keep them bite size, but if that means they are longer than they are wider, it's all cool.
Next, get a bowl and dump the cubes into it. Sprinkle Cranky Jimmy's Blackberry Pork Rub onto the cubes, and with your hands turn the cubes, more Blackberry Rub, turn, Rub, turn until ALL the surfaces are nice and covered with the Blackberry Rub. Arrange on a rack with space between each cube so the smoke and heat can get to all sides. Put into smoker. WE smoked for about 2 hours at 175 - 200 but the experts will tell you it needs to be higher. Do what works for you. 2 hours at 200 worked for us.
This is after the first 2 hours in the smoker. The fat should start to render and the outside of the cubes should look a little greasy.
Put the half-cooked cubes in a baking dish or a pan, add some butter and brown sugar. This was about 1 tbsp butter, and 1 tbsp brown sugar. Next time I would add a little more brown sugar, but not much. Cover with tin foil and then back in the smoker for another 2 hours. This time we upped the temp to 200 - 225.
This is what it looks after the 2 hours. There is a nice glazy syrup in the bottom of the pan. WE used this syrup to glaze the cubes, but the experts will tell you need to glaze separately with way more sugar and honey (or maple syrup). This worked great for us as it was not sickly sweet, but if you have a sweet tooth, do what works for you. However you glaze them, put them back on a rack with spaces in between like at the beginning, and then back into smoker for about 5 minutes. You are just crisping them up, not cooking them.
The finished product. They are a rich, tender and you cannot have just one. One thing I might try next time is to fry in a pan for a few minutes so the outside is super crispy like bacon and the fat is a little more crispy, but that's just me. However you do them, they will be amazing.