To Salt Bacon
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the cure
Mix the salt, saltpetre, salt prunella, and brown sugar together.
Cure the bacon
Salt the sides of the bacon immediately after butchering.
Remove the brine the next day.
Rub the bacon with the salt mixture daily for 3 weeks, turning it each day.
Drain the bacon.
Finish
Dry or smoke it as desired.
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 moisture out of the meat and seasons it through the curing process.
- Saltpetre
- Helps preserve the meat's pink colour and inhibits spoilage bacteria during curing.
- Salt prunella
- Acts as an additional curing salt that adds to the preserving action of the cure.
- Coarse brown sugar
- Balances the saltiness and adds mild sweetness to the cured flavour.
The step that matters
Rub the bacon with the salt mixture daily for 3 weeks. Salt must penetrate evenly through the meat to preserve it. Turning the bacon each day spreads the cure and draws out moisture, so skipping days can leave thin or uneven spots that spoil or cure unevenly.
“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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