Introduction: Chili-Studded Chipotle Pepper Bacon

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This Instructable will show you how to spice up your breakfast with:

Chili-studded Chipotle Pepper Bacon
a simple, homemade bacon embedded with Thai bird's eye chilies and rubbed with smokey chipotle pepper & adobo.

Smokey, Salty, and Spicy.

Let's get started!

Step 1: Ingredients

3 lb pork belly
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup salt
1 Tb cracked black pepper
1 tsp each ground cumin, oregano, and hot pepper flakes
8 - 10 Thai bird's eye chilies
1/2 can chipotle peppers in adobo sauce (small 7 oz can)

You will also need:
a zip-top bag
large plastic container
a knife

Step 2: Stud the Meat

First step, we want to embed the Thai bird's eye chilies into the flesh of the meat. Like little spicy mines in the bacon.
Take a nice sharp knife (which I don't have... hint, hint) and make small incisions 1/4- 1/2 inch deep throughout the meat.
Don't slice in too deep; ideally you want to make as small a hole as possible to slide the chili peppers in.
Repeat this process of piercing and stuffing until the bacon is nicely bejewelled.

Step 3: Time to Rub

Next step assemble the rub.
Mix the sugar, salt, pepper, cumin, oregano, chili flakes, and chipotle peppers in  a bowl.
Next, rub this gruesome, horror movie-esque mixture all over the pork -- getting it into all the nooks and crannies. 
Place the rubbed meat into a zip-top bag, seal it, toss it into a plastic container, and store it in your fridge for a week,
Periodically, you can massage the mixture around and flip it over every couple days, would'ya?

Step 4: Wash Off the Brine

After a week, you'll notice that some liquid will have accumulated in your sack. This is caused by the salt and sugar drawing the liquid out from the cells of the meat. It has in essence made a wet brine.
Remove your meat form the bag and wash it in cold tap water. 
Let the bacon sit, submerged  in water for 4 hr changing the water once or twice. This will help rid of excess salt and trust me it's plenty salty so you're not going to want to skip this step.
After 4hr, place on a plate or on a wire rack on a plate and let sit in the fridge overnight.

At this point you have a  choice. I typically smoke my bacon and if you want to, now is the time to do it. but I figured for this recipe the chipotle peppers would add the smokiness I desired so I opted not to smoke.

Step 5: Slice Away

Now it's time to slice your bacon strips.
First, take a sharp chef's knife (cough* hint) and slowly cut away the thick outer skin from the top of the bacon.
Next cut strips along the length of the bacon. I prefer my bacon thick cut.
Look at those nice embedded chilies!

Step 6: Fry Time

FRY THE BACON!

unfortunately, smell-o'-vision has not been invented so you can't enjoy the smokey goodness of the chipotle peppers and adobo.
but here's a video anyway so you can watch and listen to the bacon sizzle.



HYPNOTIC.
i guess too bad there's no taste-o'-vision, either.

Step 7: ENJOY IT!

Squirt some lime on it (trust me..)

Enjoy it as part of breakfast with eggs and toast.
Enjoy it as lunch as a BLT with avocado.
Enjoy it as dinner as bacon tacos!

ENJOY IT!

Chili Pepper Challenge

Finalist in the
Chili Pepper Challenge