- Chefs are a picky bunch
They tend to have differing opinions on a lot of things
but one name that keeps popping up on the subject of bacon
is Benton's.
The smoky stuff as we refer to it in our restaurant.
I'm so excited to be here.
This place is doing things the old-fashioned way.
What better place to learn than here?
Hi.
- Hi, how are you?
- Good, nice to meet you.
- Okay so what we're gonna do is we're gonna
take our pork bellies, we're gonna rub them down with salt,
we're gonna put them up in the racks
and I'm gonna show you each individual step.
- Cool.
Wow.
That's a lot of pork belly.
- Yeah this room is actually usually twice as full
as it is now.
What we're going to cure the bellies with
is just salt and brown sugar.
There's nothing added to it.
There's
no nitrates, - No nitrates.
- no nitrites, nothing like that.
All this is is salt and brown sugar.
So whenever they come in they all have these
little random nicks and cuts.
- Right.
- So what we do is we go around each side and
make sure all the corners have been salted thoroughly.
- Are you curing things every day?
- Yes ma'am.
- Like this amount?
- No not this amount.
We usually get around 12 to about 12,000 pounds of bacon,
close to 6,000 pounds of ham and that's every Monday.
- Every Monday.
- Yes ma'am.
- And then how long does it sit
while it's stacked in here with the cure on?
- It will stay like this for ten days.
- Ten days.
- We'll just try to repeat the same process here.
- So why a salt and sugar cure?
- What is that gonna do to this pork belly?
- Well what this does is it basically just preserves it
well enough to where you can keep it for at least a month,
two months at some points with our bacon.
We can cure our hams up to nine to 12 months
so this cure is what it's doing is just slowing
the metabolic rate of it breaking down.
- Okay.
Is it imparting any flavor,
salt and brown sugar? - Oh yes.
- How does curing your bacon this way differ
from a commercial company making bacon?
- Most of those companies everything is automated.
Everything here as you see we just use old wood racks,
old boards.
- You're doing this by hand.
- Everything is done by hand.
Each piece of meat whenever it comes in this door
will be touched by somebody at least 40 times.
There's 23 of us here.
All of us have a personal interest in making sure
that we give a good product.
- Do you think most commercial places are doing a dry cure
like this or brining?
I've heard they're often injected with a brine to kind
of speed things along.
- Yes most of them are all injections.
We just use salt and sugar because that's the way that
we've done it hundreds of years and it's not broke
so we're gonna continue to do it.
- Don't fix it if it's not broke.
- That's it.
- So we're starting a new rack here
that's eventually gonna look like that?
- Yes ma'am and each one of those racks are probably
2,600 pounds 3,000 pounds by the time
we get them loaded down.
- I have never seen this much pork belly.
- Yeah it's pretty nice. - Impressive.
- I don't have a bad day at work ever.
- The next part of the process is
is that we wash the bellies.
- So just one even
- Yes ma'am.
Go all the way up to the top of the hook.
There you go.
That's all you have to do.
- How many pounds are these bellies?
- Usually anywhere from 12 to 15.
- They have some weight to them.
- Course after we add salt and sugar,
they do displace a little bit of weight
so they'll lose a pound or two during the curing process.
So you're coming back on Monday to finish them right?
- I might be here till Monday (laughs).
- Okay, alright.
- So do you switch off arms?
- Yes.
- Cause already my right arm is feeling it.
- Yeah by the time you get done here
you won't need an upper body workout or a lower body
- I'm getting that vibe.
It's in there.
- Awesome.
It's very important for them not to touch of course.
Two things that are in a suspended state
whenever they get close to each other
they start breaking down faster.
So we actually make sure that we have these gaps
in between each belly.
This is where they'll stay for an additional ten days
after they've spent ten days in cure.
So at this point we're at 20 days
and then after we leave this room
we're gonna go out to the floor
and then they'll set up on room temperature
for 10 days before we put them into the smokehouse.
- It's a month out until they're even smoked.
- Yes ma'am.
- Okay.
And what kind of wood is this?
- It's only hickory.
That's the only type of wood that we use here.
What we're gonna do is just try to split that one in half
and then we'll work it down from there.
- Is there anything I need to know
or is it pretty straightforward?
- It's pretty straightforward. - Cut the wood in half.
- Just don't cut your leg off.
That's the only thing that I can suggest.
- Alright.
(ax whacks)
- Now I want you to do the same thing.
- I feel like you're making this look
a lot easier than it is.
- There we go.
- Chopping wood is not easy in any way.
- We do a technique here called cold smoking.
None of our stuff gets above 130 degrees.
We don't want it to cook.
We want it to smoke.
- Okay.
- So what we try to do is manage the heat
with how much is in there to make sure that it doesn't cook.
- So this is where it's all happening in here.
- Yes.
- How many racks are in there?
- Ten.
About how many bellies is that?
- Close to about 220.
- 220 so 220 for three days you leave them in here?
- Yes.
- Keeping that fire going.
- Oh yeah.
- Oh my gosh.
- And what we do is for those three days
we will keep it just basically as hot as we can,
as smoky as we can.
- Okay so there's no taper of smoke.
- No ma'am.
- It's full smoke for three days.
- Yes ma'am and what will happen is when we open these doors
your eyes are probably gonna water
and you're probably gonna cough a little bit.
- Oh great.
- Yeah that's kinda what we do here.
- I feel like I'm about to go into a haunted house (laughs).
- It's probably the closest to any of us
will ever get to Neverland.
- Oh my gosh, wow.
Oh my gosh.
How do you even see in there?
How do you know where to put these racks?
- Well after about five years you learn
where the walls are because you hit them quite a bit.
- Oh my gosh, and this whole room
- Yes ma'am.
- Oh my gosh.
- Actually if the smoke was out of here you could see
that we have smoke stalactites all the way across this room
that are hanging from the ceiling and coming down
because of how long that we've been doing it over here.
Alright.
- Come back in three days.
Three days later this is the smoke that we're looking for.
- Look at that color.
- As you seen out there whenever we put them in
they're very white, they're very pale.
- Right pale.
- What we're wanting is this nice golden brown
that we have here and this is what we're looking for
for every rack that comes out.
- I just have to smell it.
- Go ahead.
- Oh my gosh.
Wow.
How long does it sit out here before it gets packaged?
What happens after you have it to this point?
- Okay so it'll sit here for probably three or four days
before we take it into our deep freezer.
- Oh wow.
- After they've set in there three or four days
what we'll do is we'll bring them in here.
They'll stay in here for two days just to make sure
that they're good and hard before we use the cutting room
and they push them through their machines.
(energetic music)
- So is this a typical thickness as far as sliced bacon
being sold commercially?
- No we'd like our bacon much thicker simply
- Is there a reason for that?
- because yeah it makes it for a whole lot better dish
especially whenever it's thicker.
What we're trying to cater to is people
who enjoy our product, people who enjoy food.
This is our identity, the thick cut bacon
the smoky, the salty. - The smoke for sure.
- That's what we do here.
- I understand you do not sell sandwiches in the shop.
- No we don't.
- We're just gonna taste this bacon in BLT form
which I'm thrilled about.
Oh my gosh.
It's smoky but it's just the right amount of smoke.
- Oh yeah.
- I mean some people would compare it to
a double-smoked bacon but this is just your standard,
this is what you do.
- Yep all this was smoked for three days
just like everything else that we have here.
- It is so, so good with that salt sugar,
balances out all that smoke.
It's really, there is nothing like this.
Thanks for watching.
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