Smoked Pork Belly Burnt Ends: Weber’s Bourbon Maple Method

Delicious gourmet dish featuring braised pork belly, carrots, peas, and puree. Perfect for culinary presentations.

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This recipe is taken from Weber’s own grilling blog, where it is published as Bourbon Maple Bacon “Burnt Ends”. It swaps the traditional brisket point for a slab of fresh pork belly: a two-day maple cure, a smoke to 195°F, then a second, hotter pass where cubes of belly are tossed in bourbon and cayenne until crisp at the edges. Below are Weber’s quantities and steps, with USDA’s pork guidance to show how the recipe’s finishing temperature compares with the safety minimum.

Ingredients

Serves 8 to 10. Weber gives about 10 minutes of prep plus 2 days of curing, 2 1/2 hours of smoking and about 1 more hour to finish.

For the cure

  • 2 tablespoons freshly ground black pepper
  • 2 tablespoons kosher salt
  • 3 tablespoons brown sugar
  • 1/3 cup good-quality maple syrup
  • 1 fresh pork belly, skin off, about 3 pounds total

For the burnt ends

  • 1/3 cup good-quality bourbon
  • 3 tablespoons vanilla sugar (or light brown sugar)
  • 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
  • 1 tablespoon very coarse ground black pepper

Also needed: a 1-gallon freezer bag, a leave-in probe thermometer, cherry wood chunks and shallow foil pans. Weber stresses that the belly must be fresh and uncured, or the finished burnt ends will be very salty.

Method

Cure (2 days ahead)

  1. Mix the pepper, salt and brown sugar and sprinkle it all over the belly.
  2. Put the belly in the bag, pour in the maple syrup, press out as much air as you can, seal, and massage the syrup around.
  3. Lay the bag in a shallow pan in the refrigerator for 2 days, flipping it after day 1. Then remove the pork, and discard the leftover cure and the bag.

First smoke

  1. Set the grill for indirect, low heat, 250-350°F (121-177°C), with a half-filled foil pan of water on the indirect side. Add the cherry chunks to the charcoal, close the lid and wait for smoke.
  2. Place the belly on the indirect side, insert the probe into the center, and smoke until it reaches 195°F (91°C), about two hours.
  3. Rest it loosely covered in a warm place for 20 minutes. The recipe says you can chill it overnight at this point and finish the next day.

Finish the burnt ends

  1. Cut the belly into chunks about 1 1/2 to 2 inches wide.
  2. Combine the cayenne, sugar and coarse pepper, toss it with the chunks, then add the bourbon and toss again.
  3. Spread the pieces in shallow foil pans without touching.
  4. Reset the grill to indirect medium-low, 300-350°F (149-177°C), with a water pan, and add a few cherry chunks. Once smoke appears, put the pans on the indirect side and close the lid for 45 minutes.
  5. Check that the pieces are darker and crisp at the edges with the fat rendered into the pan, then serve warm.

195°F is a texture target, not a safety number

USDA’s minimum-temperature chart lists 145°F (63°C), with at least a 3-minute rest, for beef, pork, veal and lamb steaks, chops and roasts. It does not name pork belly, so that whole-cut pork figure is the nearest official reference. Either way, Weber’s 195°F (91°C) pull is 50 degrees above it. The chart also notes that consumers may cook to higher temperatures for personal preference, and Weber gives no safety reasoning for its number (and the Celsius figures in this article are our conversions), so treat it as the recipe’s doneness target for tender belly rather than a food-safety line.

A second Weber recipe, the Japan site’s Burnt Ends, cubes the belly first and cooks it in stages: smoked at 130°C to 60°C internal, wrapped with barbecue sauce, butter and honey until 90°C, then finished to 96°C or until tacky. In Fahrenheit (our conversions) that is roughly 266°F grill heat, 140°F, 194°F and 205°F. Both Weber recipes finish far above the 145°F safety minimum, and the Japan version also gives “until tacky” as an alternative cue to the number.

Handling leftovers

The Weber recipe says the smoked belly can be chilled overnight before the finishing step, which makes the second pass a good make-ahead point. For leftovers after serving, USDA’s chart lists 165°F (74°C) as the reheating temperature.

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