Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Food, Cooking, and Game Preparation how much bacon yield off a pig,

I bought a half pig this year gutted and skinned hanged the pig weighed 160lbs so I good size pig. Picked up the bacon yesterday and ended up with about 6lbs of bacon. I'm thinking the smokehouse took quite a bit off the top. The last pig I bought I am pretty sure I ended up with close to 30 lbs of bacon. I think I am done taking meat to the butcher and am going to start processing my own bacon. Does anyone here smoke there own and what methods do you use.

I would think 6 lbs or so is about right , it depend on the hog breed and fat content. The one's I've been around for a 300 lb hog is about 25 lbs or so. Never actually weighed it though.

A center cut slab at Costco is 11-12 lbs (1/2 pig). But, those are probably Robo-Pigs.

Here they say 8 lbs. for a half pig.

That is about spot on for 1/2 hog. That hog looks like more fat than meat, butcher prob did you a favor and cured the meatiest instead of giving you big old slices of cured lard !!!!!!!!!

Depends on how it's cut but bacons shoulda been bigger I would think. When we get bacons brought in, person is charged on weight. Not much loss if any in the smoker. Barry

Never enough!!!

We kill hogs every year and make bacon. Our hogs are in the 325 to 350 range. I brine the bacon for 15 days, hang in smokehouse for a week or so and then smoke. Always rurns out great. You can google a brine mix or use this....1 gal water, 1 cup salt, 1 cup white sugar, 1 cup brown sugar and 1 tablespoon Prague powder #1. Mix to dissolve and put the meat in.

I'd say that's about right on the amount of bacon you got if they only gave you the lean.

Forgot to add....when you brine, remove the skin.

No expert but I butcher one a year for myself. Just butchered one last week that was 320 lb live weight. It was not excessively fat. I ended up with 12 lb of sliced bacon and about 3 lb of bacon ends which I sliced into bacon bits for soups/stew. I probably could have gotten a little more but it would have been the thicker end pieces closer to the flank which I threw into the sausage pile.

For my bacon I use Morton's Tender Quick. Follow the directions on the back for the Rub (~1/2 oz per lb of meat). Rub it on, put the bacon in a bag in the fridge and let it cure for 12-24 hours. Wash it off to remove the excess cure on the outside of the meat. Smoke for about 4-6 hours. Cool and slice. Makes very good bacon.

We started taking boneless shoulders and curing/smoking and slicing like bacon. They call it cottage bacon. Fat has a slight different flavor than cured belly. People really like it and it gives you one more option for more bacon. Barry

You should have gotten more than 6 pounds of bacon - that's about 1/4 of the yield of a good sized hog (240-260 dressed weight). I make all of my own bacon (cured and smoked) and do all of my own meat processing at home. Making bacon and ham is very simple with three ingredients - salt, sugar, and cure #1 (other spices can be added as desired - I use garlic, onion, and black pepper). I use the equilibrium method for all of my curing, which is a method that uses the weight of the meat and then a percentage of that weight to determine how much of each ingredient. Our family likes 2% salt, 1% sugar, .25% cure, .1% onion powder, .1% garlic powder, and .25% black pepper. Put in large ziploc bags, cure for 7 days per inch of thickness and it's impossible to get it too salty. Can be in the cure mix for months and still stay good (because it's a preservative process). I then smoke over hickory and apple at 150 degrees for 6-8 hours. It's delicious. This is the process I use for hams as well. Same recipe works for venison roasts also, but I bump the heat up in the smoker and take to internal temp of 140-150 degrees F. Feel free PM me if you have other questions or inquiries about how to do it. Once you do your own you will never have someone else do it again. All you need is the ingredients, a good digital scale that is precise to 1 gram and another digital scale precise to .01 gram - the scales can be had for under $30 total from Amazon. And I have an Excel spreadsheet with the calculations all ready to go - just put the weight of the meat in and the rest of the ingredient weights are computed for me.