Agriculture Working For You: Where's the Bacon?

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- [Chelsea] Hello, my name is Chelsea Hill, and I'm a Penn State Extension livestock educator from northeast PA.

I'm currently on my family's farm in Honesdale, Pennsylvania called the Hardler Farm.

On our farm, we raise beef cattle, dairy cattle, sheep, dairy goats, and pigs, produce raw cow and goat milk, have a custom slaughter and processing facility, and operate a small retail store where we sell our products.

Our farm is multi-generational, with my siblings and I being the fourth generation to work the farm.

Today I am excited to share with you one of my favorite food products that we make on the farm, bacon.

I'm going to walk you through the process of extracting the pork belly from a pig carcass, brining it, smoking it, and then slicing and packaging it to get our delicious end product.

So here we have a half of a carcass of a pig that we are going to break down to get to the pork belly that will then be processed further into bacon.

The pork belly is found, you guessed it, on the belly of the pig.

To get this piece out of the carcass, we're going to break the pig down into primal cuts, which are more manageable to work with.

The first cut we're going to make will be to separate and remove the hind leg.

This cut is made between the last two vertebrae of the spine using a bone saw.

Once the leg is removed, we will then need to separate the front shoulder and picnic from the remainder of the carcass by cutting a line directly between the fourth and fifth rib.

What we have left is the loin and the side to separate.

Depending on what types of chops and ribs the customer is looking for, this line of separation may vary.

Since we want more bacon, we will be cutting tighter to the loin eye area.

The final slice will be to remove the spare ribs from the side to leave us with the pork belly.

Our next step will be to take this clean pork belly and brine it with a mixture of water, spices, sugar, and salt to preserve it before smoking.

To get the best absorption of the brine, the pork belly is pumped and then left to soak in a brine bath for 24 to 48 hours before smoking.

After its brine bath, the belly is placed in the smoker until the probe thermometer reads that the bacon has reached an internal temperature of 152 degrees Fahrenheit.

Once fully smoked, the slab bacon is then refrigerated until cold to an internal temperature below 40 degrees Fahrenheit before handling.

Now comes the fun part, slicing the bacon.

We use an automatic slicer that will cut the slab bacon into thick, medium, or thin slices, depending on the preference of our customers.

Most folks like a thin to medium cut bacon, but we like ours thick.

Now that we have our bacon sliced, we will vacuum seal it, and it's ready for our customers.

The bacon we process here is either part of a custom cut order and will be packaged up with the rest of the pig for an individual customer, or if the swine was slaughtered under USDA inspection, it will be for sale in our retail store to be bought in individual packages to take home and cook up to share, or maybe not.

Thank you to everyone involved in the process that makes bacon possible, from the hoof to our tables.

I encourage everyone to support your local farmers and small businesses by shopping and buying local in your communities.

Check out local farm market maps like PARN and Pennsylvania Produce and Preferred product listings.

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