Cobbett’s Receipt for Curing Bacon
Ingredients
Directions
Salt the pork
Rub the inside of the flitches with coarse sea salt.
Place the flitches flesh sides up in a salting trough with a gutter to drain brine.
Cure
Change the salt every 4 to 5 days to ensure it does not become sopping.
Rotate the flitches, placing the one that was on the top to the bottom.
Cure for about six weeks, adjusting time based on thickness and weather.
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
- Pork flitches
- Provide the belly meat that becomes bacon once salted and cured.
- Coarse sea salt
- Draws out moisture and preserves the meat while curing it.
The step that matters
Change the salt every 4 to 5 days. Salt draws water out of the meat to form brine. If the salt becomes soaked and sopping, it can no longer cure evenly, so fresh salt keeps the curing consistent.
“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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