Wiltshire Method of Curing Bacon
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the pork
Cut up the hog and sprinkle salt on the flitches.
Let the blood drain for 24 hours.
Cure
Mix the coarse sea salt, brown sugar, coarse sea salt (formerly 'bay salt'), and saltpetre thoroughly.
Rub this mixture into the flitches, turning and rubbing them every day for a month.
Dry and smoke
Hang the flitches up to dry.
Smoke the flitches 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 sea salt
- Draws out moisture and preserves the meat by slowing bacterial growth.
- Brown sugar
- Balances the saltiness and adds a mild sweetness to the cure.
- Saltpetre
- Helps preserve the pink colour of the cured meat and inhibits spoilage bacteria.
The step that matters
Rubbing and turning the flitches daily. Salt must reach every part of the meat evenly. Turning and rubbing daily redistributes the brine and cure, so thick areas do not stay under-salted and spoil.
“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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