Over the past decade, and since falling off the vegetarian wagon, I’ve home cured bacon a couple times. If you eat bacon and have never tried home curing, I recommend you indulge.  Although you might find store-bought artisanal bacon that compares, my home cured bacon has always been the best bacon I’ve ever had.  It’s something I’ve started to share with a couple coworkers, in  fact.  The “bacon club”.

The double batch I prepped this morning uses “maple sugar”, which I only just learned about through the American Test Kitchen DIY bacon video.  (Previously, I’ve just used maple syrup.)  One of the batches will rely on a modified version of Michael Symon’s recipe [link] — which I’ve used before, and is wonderful.  The other batch will be a variant of a maple black pepper recipe [link].  Both will be smoked with applewood.