One of my favorite things in the world is this simple recipe, made from fresh side. And makes a good roast or bacon Roll the side slab in salt and pepper and then throw it in the smoker on the cool side for 4 hours Keep the hot side small to slice into bacon and medium hot to smoke as a belly roast. A good bacon fix while the rest of the slabs are hanging out with the hams in the smoke house cold smoking to perfection I like hickory smoked and use shagbark hickory since you can get intense hickory flavor just using the bark and don't have to kill the tree.
A little bit of shag bark soaked in water goes a long way, unless you really really like intense hickory flavor. Really the bark is about 20x more potent than the wood. I look like a damn fool 20 feet up a ladder pulling bark off my favorite trees. Just don't go down to the green bark and it shags out again in a couple of years.
