In about a week you could be eating the best bacon of your entire life. You could be holding in your hand a glistening mahogany slab of perfectly crisped pink, tender.

Kim Richards on Dr. Phil: I Am an Alcoholic.

Kim Richards came clean about her ongoing battle with alcoholism Tuesday, telling Dr. Phil Mc. Graw that she was driven to drink because she was upset about being estranged from her family. And she admitted that the night of her arrest earlier this month wasn’t the first time she’d broken her sobriety – despite her denials at The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills reunion. I did have drinks a couple other times over the past few months.

If your husband leaves you can feel like you are falling apart. Don't! Do these seven things to hold onto your sanity if you've been left behind.

It was wine. I was ashamed to say anything at the reunion, embarrassed,” the reality star said in the interview, which was filmed before she checked into rehab and aired Tuesday. I would have loved to say to the girls, ‘You know what, you’re right,’ but the way they were coming at me, they didn’t make it easy.”Richards, 5. Twitter – until the day before she was arrested. I have not drank once this season on camera. Not one time,” she said. At that point, I was not lying.

I had not drank in over three years. Every one of them had come to me and told me Lisa Rinna was talking behind my back. That is none of her business.” But what hurt the most, she said, was the drama between her and younger sister Kyle Richards, which only escalated after her pit bull bit Kyle’s daughter Alexia, forcing her to undergo surgery. It isn’t the blog or the season that upset me. It was the relationship between my sister and my niece that’s been destroyed,” she said, crying. But the bottom line is, it’s the overall outcome of where today is with my relationships with the people I love the most, and that’s what really started getting me upset.” Richards was arrested April 1.

Beverly Hills Hotel for public intoxication, trespassing, resisting an officer and battery on a police officer. She’s due in court May 1. Richards insisted she only drank a glass (about 2 in.) of vodka at daughter Brooke’s house before driving the hotel. I was scared, and I was intoxicated, so everything’s magnified,” she said. I poured one drink, but maybe it was bigger than I thought.” As for the battery charge, “Maybe I did kick him,” she said. I don’t know. Throughout the fifth season of RHOBH, Richards’ alleged sobriety was the source of drama, causing the former child star to lash out at Kyle, Rinna and Eileen Davidson.

But after her arrest, the ladies wished their friend the best on social media, sending Tweets of support. RELATED: Real Housewives of Beverly Hills‘ Kim Richards Arrested.

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You Can Make Bacon At Home. And It’s Delicious.

In about a week you could be eating the best bacon of your entire life. You could be holding in your hand a glistening mahogany slab of perfectly crisped pink, tender, juicy meat streaked through with succulent fat.

You could be proclaiming to the world: “Behold what I have made! It is bacon and it is sublime!”Instead of some lame fruitcake, you could give people what they really want for the holidays: gourmet, handcrafted bacon, straight from your own kitchen. And here’s the secret I can now confidently reveal: making your own bacon at home isn’t just possible – it’s simple. So, join me, if you will, in an exploration of how to make the best bacon of your life. There will be a few detours and footnotes to talk about some food sciencey- stuff, but if you want to get right to the meat (hah!) of the matter scroll down for the printable recipe. Ready? Ok! Let’s make bacon!

What Is Bacon? You know what bacon is, right? Or do you? In the United States, bacon is, by USDA definition, the cured belly of a pig. You rub a section of meat from the belly primal of a pig with a cure – salt, sugar, usually pink salt (more on that later) and seasonings of choice. After curing, bacon is smoked. But all around the world people cure pork, and they don’t all stampede towards the fatty belly for a sweet- smokey meat kick. This post will teach you how to make American- style slab bacon from the belly of the pig.

Slab bacon is a delicious place to start, but check out this chart which shows some common bacons and bacon- like cured meats. Notice that pretty much every part of the pig can be made into something in the bacon family. Bacon doesn’t end with the belly!

What Do You Need To Make Bacon At Home? Making bacon at home isn’t hard, it doesn’t require magical meat knowledge or a lot of fancy equipment. But it does require about a week’s time, a pork belly, one weird ingredient called Pink Salt, and a way to smoke your bacon. So while this project is totally, completely worth it, it helps to plan ahead.

Pork Belly. Getting a pork belly is not as straightforward or as cheap as you might think. I bought naturally raised happy- hippie pork belly through the wholesale vendor I’ve been working with since my catering days and it cost me $4. I bought three whole bellies, each between 1.

That is a lot of bacon but I’m not a girl who backs down from a challenge. If you buy your pork as a whole or half- animal directly from a farmer, ask the butcher to leave the belly whole. For the love of bacon, do not let them grind it! Any good independent butcher will be able to order you pork belly (if they can’t they aren’t a good independent butcher) but depending on local demand may not have slabs of proto- bacon in stock. Asian and Latin- American markets tend to be a better source of pork belly that your typical suburban supermarket. Previously frozen pork belly can be used to make bacon but your end product won’t be quite as moist.

Pink Salt. See full explanation below in the footnote. The TL; DR version is: pink salt is a special curing salt that ensures you don’t make Botulism Bacon. Order it online. This is what I use. Smoker and Woodchips. For the smoker, I used a small “Little Chief” Electric Smoker given to me years ago by my sister and brother- in- law. Guess what favorite cured meat they are getting for Christmas?) The smoker I have is a bitty thing – I have an older version of this model – and if you’re willing to invest a hundred bucks in a smoker I would recommend something more substantial.

We are so overwhelmed by the awesomeness of homemade bacon that we are looking at upgrading to this smoker for Christmas. But if this is your first time making bacon, you probably don’t want to invest in dedicated smoking equipment. You can rig a charcoal, Weber- style grill as a smoker. See excellent instructions here, but note that for our bacon we want to keep the temperature at around 2.

You can also build your own smoker out of, among other things, flower pots (clean ones, without flowers in them). Full instructions on building a flower pot smoker here. I’ve never done this, but it looks fairly legit. You can also stovetop smoke your bacon. Check out this process for making a stovetop smoker at home with stuff you probably already have on hand.

But – fair warning – indoor smoking will leave your entire house smelling like a campfire. For days. And unless you have some serious industrial ventilation in your kitchen, you might want to temporally silence any smoke alarms in the house. Put those batteries back in, though!) Stovetop smoking works best to impart an initial smokey flavor and color, and you can finish cooking your bacon in a 2. It’s not exactly the same, but it’ll do in a pinch. For wood, I used bags of hardwood apple chips I picked up at the grocery store, like these. They aren’t too expensive. A $5 bag smoked two complete pork bellies, or about 2.

You can use other types of smoking chips or chunks  – alder, mesquite, etc. If you use any old woodchips from the muni tree grinding service you’ll get nastiness. Making Bacon At Home: Step by Step. I’ve broken this down into lots of steps with lots of pictures, but don’t let that intimidate you. Each step is super easy. Get To Know Your Pork Belly. Here’s a pork belly, fat- side up.

Here’s a pork belly, skin- side down. You can see where the full belly was cut off the ribs (those little fingery looking lines in the belly).

Here’s a pork belly in cross- section. Ah, now the bacony potential becomes apparent! Trim Belly As Necessary. If you belly came with skin- on, carefully trim away the skin, leaving as much fat as possible. Mine came skin- off so I didn’t have to do this step.

Trim off any particularly thick membranes on the underside of the belly where the ribs connected. Smoke typically doesn’t permeate thick membranes like that, and they don’t break down with cooking, so they are like eating a rubber band. Below- right on this photo shows the belly before trimming; top- left shows it after trimming. Cut Belly into Manageable Size Pieces. You could cure and smoke a whole belly, but you’ll need more specialty equipment.

Cutting this 1. 2- pound belly in thirds gave me pieces just the right size to fit into gallon- size ziptop bags. That’ll make life easier at cure time. It’s important that your cure be properly calibrated to the amount of meat you are curing. Watch Heat Wave Online Heat Wave Full Movie Online more. The recipe in this post is designed for 4 pounds of pork belly (give or take a few ounces).

If you cure a different amount, you must adjust the cure amounts accordingly. Prepare Cure. Combine all cure ingredients in a bowl and mix well.

Measure carefully and be particularly precise about the Pink Salt. This is how the Pink Salt comes packaged. Rub That Cure On Yer Meat. Really get in there and work the salt and sugar and spices into the belly. Give it a little massage and talk sweetly to it. This belly is going to be your bacon, after all. Bag, Wait, Flip, Wait.

Put your cure- rubbed pork belly in a large, heavy- duty ziptop bag. If any cure fell off the belly, throw it in the bag, too. Squeeze as much air out of the bag as you can without doing something gross with a straw, and seal it well. Now, put your curing belly in the refrigerator. Soon, the salt and sugar will mingle with the juice from the pork and form a thick kind- of brine around the belly. Every day, more or less, turn the belly over so that all sides have equal time with the cure. This is why the ziptop bag is so great: you just flip the whole thing over without opening it.

Give your pork belly seven to ten days to cure. After a week it should feel quite firm, but still pliable if you bend it.

If it still feels soft, you can cure it for another day and check again. Rinse Your Cured Pork Belly.

After the pork belly is sufficiently cured, remove it from the bag and rinse it well. Some peppercorns may be stuck into the fat a bit and that’s ok, but do try to get most of the cure off the meat.