Wiltshire Bacon
Ingredients
Directions
Cure
Sprinkle each flitch of bacon with salt and let the blood drain for 24 hours.
Mix the sugar, fine salt, saltpetre, and coarse salt.
Rub the mixture well on the bacon, turning and wetting it daily for a month.
Dry and smoke
Hang the bacon to dry and 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
- Fine salt
- Draws moisture out of the meat and preserves it, while seasoning the bacon.
- Coarse salt
- Draws moisture out of the meat and preserves it through the long cure.
- Saltpetre
- Helps preserve the meat and keeps its pink colour during curing.
- Coarse sugar
- Balances the harshness of the salt and adds mild sweetness to the cure.
The step that matters
Rubbing and turning the cure daily. Salt cures from the outside inward, so uneven coverage or skipped turning leaves some areas under-cured and others too salty. Daily turning spreads the cure and keeps the meat evenly preserved over the month.
“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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