Curing Pork for Bacon
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the hog
Select young hogs weighing 200-250 lbs for best quality bacon.
Butcher the hog in cold, clear, and dry weather.
Block out the meat on the same day of killing.
Trim and salt
Do not trim the meat until the next morning when it is cold.
If the weather is cold enough to freeze slightly, spread the meat on a roof or scaffold and lightly salt it.
If it is very cold, keep the meat indoors to prevent hard freezing.
Trim the meat closely and smoothly the next morning.
Pack the trimmed meat in a box, covering each piece with salt.
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
- Pork
- Provides the belly meat that becomes bacon once cured and smoked.
- Coarse sea salt
- Draws out moisture and preserves the meat while it cures.
The step that matters
Keeping the meat from freezing or spoiling before salting. Cold weather keeps the meat firm and slows bacteria, but hard freezing can make the meat uneven and hinder salt from penetrating evenly. Keeping it indoors in very cold conditions protects the texture and lets the salt cure it evenly.
“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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