Smoked Bacon Recipe

This smoked bacon recipe in a Traeger is amazing for breakfast or on top of burgers! If you’re looking for smoky crispy pieces of pork with lots of flavor for this is going to be a hit on your table this weekend.

You may never cook your pig any other way after this. I am serious y’all. I mean buying a good brand uncured was what I thought was my favorite until we threw these on the grate one day. Even our kids were asking for seconds and thirds.

You can do this a few ways, starting with pork belly sliced or grab a package at the store and add the smokiness. If yours is plain to begin with you’d want some pink curing salt. Ours was packaged and came out more amazing than as is. Serve it to your brood and they’ll think you’re a hero I tell you.

To get your meats absolutely perfect we have this printable meat smoking chart to refer to so each and every time it will be fork tender.

Ingredient Notes

Let’s start with what type of bacon you should use. I am kinda’ particular when it comes to meat. Typically at the beginning of each year we will buy half a cow and sometimes half of a pig from a local farmer. That way we know it is grass fed, organic and raised in a humane way.

If you don’t have this opportunity it is okay because they still offer these varieties at the store. What you should look for is uncured bacon packages first off, organic and thick cut is the ultimate variety. Turkey Bacon is okay but won’t get as crispy, period.

with Pork Belly

Note: We are not making bacon from scratch out of a pork belly here. Rather we are using bacon from the butcher and smoking it ourselves to give it a richer smokier flavor. If you wanted to smoke the pork belly I would pressure cook pork belly or cook pork belly in air fryer first. Then cool it overnight, slice the next day and start with the directions below from there.

Candied

If you want sticky candied bacon you could roll each piece in a mixture of brown sugar, Kosher salt and even a pinch of black pepper. There are a ton of ways you can add flavor to this dish if you think outside of the box. We used the bacon as is and loved the natural flavors.

Tips

If you want to find the best already sliced varieties at the store skip the refrigerated section next to the cheese and keep walking to the butcher counter. Better yet, if you have a butcher store in your area GO THERE!! There’s a HUGE difference and it’s well worth the drive.

If you go buy a big package and then separate it out into smaller pieces, wrapped with plastic wrap and into freezer bags. Then you can pull one out on the weekends. That is what we do. Actually, that’s not true. When we moved to Idaho we bought half a pig and the butcher packaged it into about a weeks worth for us. 😉

When you begin, always preheat your smoker to 150 degrees before you add any food inside so it cooks at the same rate start to finish. You need a cast iron grill grate / griddle pan seen below (used to make cook bacon in the oven too) or a cast iron skillet would work. I like this one though because it’s nice and big, rectangular, and flat on the other side to make pancakes.

What to Make with Smoked Bacon

You can roll it up with cheese into our smoked meatloaf recipe! Our smoked bacon wrapped pork chops is incredibly amazing too. If you are new to this machine you are in for a real treat. Whether you have an electric version like you see below, or Traeger with pellets the temperature and timing basically works the same.

What to do with leftovers

What do you do with leftover cooked bacon? It saves quite well actually. You will need to wait until they cool completely, do this on paper towels. Then throw them into a freezer bag and suck all of the air out of there. Reheat the next day for best results. I like to put bacon in the air fryer that day to crisp it back up. It is by far the best way ever.