Makin' Bacon

I am starting to broaden my interests from just sausage-making to meat preservation techniques in general and all things charcuterie. So I have bought the popular reference, Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking and Curing and my first project has been to make some bacon. It's quick, easy and very satisfying.

The process is simple. Get some pork belly, cover it with sufficient curing salt mixture, let it cure for a week and then smoke or slow cook it. Remove the rind, and slice. Done.

Pork belly trimmed and ready for curing.

It took me a while to figure out the type of curing salt that I needed. In general, there are two types of curing salt, and various names to describe them. Curing salt is toxic if you use too much. And if you use to little the meat will not cure properly and could be toxic. We want the sweet spot in the middle. So it's important to use the right stuff and to use the right amount. To make bacon, I needed to use 'cure #1'. In the States this is called 'pink salt' as it is dyed to indicate what's in it and to give a pink colour to the meat. Cure #1 is used for meat that is cured and then cooked. If I were making a meat to be eaten without cooking, like salami, I would be using 'cure #2'

Cured bacon and slow-cooked for two hours.

My girlfriend is not keen on smoked bacon so I opted for the slow cook (un-smoked) method which is to roast the cured pork belly two hours at 80 deg C. That is a very low temperature. I will make smoked bacon some other time. I now have plenty of cure and it doesn't go off.

So making the bacon was a no-brainer and the hardest part was slicing the strips of bacon. Of course I enjoy wielding my lovely sharp cooks knives so this was a labour of love. I was very happy with the finished result. Everyone else was happy too. My girlfriend seemed quite sceptical at first when I said that I would be making our usual Sunday morning bacon butties with meat that I had cured myself. But I think she changed her mind after the first bite. And when my sister and family came to stay we finished the remainder, with my sister declaring that it was the best bacon she had ever tasted. Well, she was a vegetarian for over 20 years. At the end of their stay I sent them off with a jar of cure and some instructions.

So it's time to get some more bacon on the go. I'm missing it already.