Bacon, Breakfast
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Cut the belly pork into three pieces weighing 3 to 5 pounds each.
Cure and smoke
Cure the bacon in sweet pickle for 15 to 25 days.
Smoke the bacon for 2 to 4 days.
Inspect and store
Inspect the bacon before canning to ensure quality.
Hang the bacon in a cool, dry, well-ventilated place for storage.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.
Explore the science
What each ingredient does
- Belly pork
- Provides the fatty and meaty layers that give bacon its texture and flavor.
- Sweet pickle
- Brine that cures the meat, seasoning it and helping preserve it.
- Smoking materials
- Add smoky aroma and flavor to the cured pork and help preserve it.
The step that matters
Cure the bacon in sweet pickle for 15 to 25 days. The pickle must fully penetrate the thick pork pieces to cure them evenly. Curing salts and sugars draw out moisture and inhibit spoilage bacteria, so an incomplete cure can leave parts of the meat unsafe to store.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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