To Cure Bacon
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the hog
Divide the hog and remove the chine, leaving the spare ribs.
Cure the bacon
Salt the flitch for 6 days, then drain off the first pickle.
Mix the common salt with the bay salt, saltpetre, and coarse sugar.
Rub the salt mixture well into the bacon and turn it every day for a month.
Finish
Drain and smoke the bacon for a few days or hang it up in the kitchen away from the fire.
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
- Hog
- Provides the belly and flitch meat that becomes the bacon.
- Coarse sea salt
- Draws out moisture and preserves the meat by slowing spoilage.
- Saltpetre
- Helps preserve the meat and gives cured bacon its characteristic pink colour.
- Coarse sugar
- Softens the sharpness of the salt and adds a mild sweetness.
The step that matters
Rubbing the salt mixture in well and turning daily. Salt only preserves where it reaches. Thorough rubbing and daily turning spread the cure evenly, so no patch is left unsalted and open to spoilage during the long cure.
“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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