Home cured bacon

Im getting so fed up of paying expensive prices for low quality stuff, one of these bug bears is bacon, as autumn approaches i tend to use more bacon than normal to form base flavours in recipes.  the supermarket bacon is awful they just pump it with saline and leave it 24 hours before selling it, and when you get it home it seems to become the norm that when you cook it you get loads of scummy white liquid leaking out of the stuff  while it cooks, it also doesn't taste of much apart from salty fiber meat in my opinion. 

So i decide to have a go at making my own bacon, i quite like streaky bacon as it has more flavour, so got two large bit of belly of pork, as that is the part of the pig that makes streaky bacon.  I got two as i wanted to try two different methods a wet cured and dried cured, just so i could understand the process and of course the taste.

I asked the butcher to trim out the bones which we had as spare ribs for lunch, and when i got home i stabbed my 2 x belly of pork with a sharp knife just to help the curing process get through the meat. 

Dry process

First i worked on the dry curing and i made the cure mix which was 2 cups of salt and 1 cup of dark brown sugar, i also added some pepper and dried thyme but you don't have to do this.  The sugar helps counteract the saltiness and keep the bacon moist and soft.

I also used saltpetre which is a nitrate, which can be hard to get hold of as it is the primary ingredient in gunpowder, however nitrates are essential as they help fight the against botulism and E coli  and is an important ingredient if making parma ham or chorizo as these are raw products.  However bacon and gammon are cooked through so kill these nasty bugs so nitrates are used in less quantities they also help the bacon keep its pink colour and not look grey like pork chop colour.  i used an egg cup full of saltpetre rubbing it into the nooks and crannys of the meat and paying attention to the bloody areas.  After the saltpetre was added i massaged the meat with my salt sugar cure mix.

After giving the meat a really good rub i put it in a plastic box and covered with the remaining cure mix.  It is important not to let the bacon come into contact with metal as it reacts with the curing process.  even when the bacon is sliced it is not stores in foil but rather cling film and frozen for when i need it next.

Every day liquid from the meat is draw out of the bacon from the salt in the cure mix i made and this will need to be drained off and the meat turned, you only have to do this for 3 days but if you want parma ham do it for 7- 10 days.  After this give the meat a really good wash in cold water and then slice and enjoy.  I have a food slicer but i found that it really helps to put the meat in the freezer for 1 hour just to firm it up a bit for slicing.


Wet process

This one was a doddle i simple used the new washing up bowl we bought for camping recently as it was the perfect size and was not metal.  Then i made a basic brine using 500g of salt, 6 litres of water and 3 tbsps of white sugar.  then i just forgot about it for 3 days and let it do its thing.  After this just wash and slice as before with the dry process bacon.  You can also use the wet process to make back bacon if you like that which comes from the loin of the pig where the chops come from.

So below i took pictures of the 2 meats cut and laid out for you to see the colour difference between the two bacon's, the first one is the wet process and is a more fleshy plump lighter coloured bacon, very tasty and i think i will use this one for my base flavour in my recipes.  The bottom picture is the Dry process and is a firmer meat and very very tasty perfect for a butty or breakfast. When cooking the meat it didn't cook with all that horrid liquid coming out of it and it did not shrink, also i was very happy as i paid £8 for a side of belly and got £20 worth of bacon if i had bought the same weight from a supermarket and for a more inferior product.  I had read that people who make their own bacon don't buy it after making it and i have to agree i am now a convert for something so simple and so very tasty. I was going to smoke the bacon as i have a smoker but it is a hot smoker and you need a cold smoke process something we would  have to make so i will have to appeal to Ali's man skills to hook a incinerator to some filing cabinets to make me a cold smoke house for sides of bacon and hams.