The Venison Bacon turned out AWESOME!
I did have a few learnings as Tony predicted
1. Next time we are going to line the pans with plastic wrap to facilitate easier removal.
2. Because of all of the moisture in the meat, I am going to skip the water pan the next time.
3. Because the loaves were too wide for my slicer, we had to try a couple of different ways to split the loaves prior to slicing before we figured out the best way.
4. Next time, I am going to throw some black pepper and maybe some extra seasoning or maple syrup on some of the loaves to kick them up a notch.
5. It definitely took longer than I thought it would. I feel so stupid because I have used this smoker several times now, but just realized this weekend that I hadn't seen the small cardboard piece around the internal thermostat probe. This was apparently the reason that I was able to get my temps up so high and my swings were so large. For those having trouble getting up to temp, making some type of food safe metal cover for the thermostat to simulate my mistake of leaving the cardboard on may help.
So, I did notice that my smoker with a full 25lbs of ground venison loaves was having a hard time getting to temp. Although this could have been because of my probe placement. Since the smoker was pretty packed, I had to place the smoker probe pretty close to the meat. I will know more on my next pork butt smoke. Because of this, I ran at 150 (instead of my planned 140) for the first 4 hours.
Meat temp was at about 117 when I cranked the smoker up to 175.
Meat temp didn't change much in an hour so I bumped it up to 200 for the rest of the smoke which took another 3 hours.
So, it took about 8 hours instead of the 6 I was figuring. But in the end the results turned out really well.
I was planning on cooking to 155, but once it reached 155, they didn't have the darker outside color that I was looking for, so we took it up to 160.
We then cooled them overnight and sliced the next morning. They tasted good both cold and fried. They tasted different cold vs fried, but both really good.
Sorry, I forgot to take any pics of the fried pieces as they tended to get eaten as fast as they were cooked. But here are a few pics of the sliced bacon as well as a pic of all of the vacuum packs ready for the freezer. I also threw in a pic of the 25lbs of pepper stix that we smoked in my Dad's Masterbuilt XL. They were some of the best that we have made yet.
This batch was for my sister. But my brother and I are definitely planning on doing another batch for us sometime this Spring.
