To Cube Bacon
Ingredients
Directions
Cure the bacon
Sprinkle each flitch of bacon with salt and let the blood drain off for 24 hours.
Pound and mix the sugar, sea salt, saltpetre, and common salt together.
Rub the mixture well into the meat, turning it every day for a month.
Dry and smoke
Hang the meat to dry and then smoke it for 10 days.
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
- Coarse sugar
- Adds sweetness and helps balance the harshness of the salts in the cure.
- Coarse sea salt
- Draws moisture out of the meat and seasons it through the curing period.
- Saltpetre
- Helps the meat keep its colour and adds a cured flavour.
- Common salt
- Seasons the meat and draws out moisture, helping preserve it.
The step that matters
Turning the meat daily during the cure. Salt cures penetrate unevenly, so the meat must be turned and rubbed every day for the mixture to reach all parts and cure consistently.
“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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