Somersetshire Bacon
Ingredients
Directions
Salt the pork
Place the sides in large wooden troughs.
Sprinkle all over with coarse sea salt.
Leave the meat to drain for 24 hours.
Wipe the sides dry.
Rub and cure
Heat some coarse sea salt in a large frying pan and rub the hot salt over the meat until it absorbs enough.
Repeat this process every morning for four days, turning the sides only twice.
If the flitches are large, keep them in brine for three weeks, turning them ten times.
Dry
After brining, thoroughly dry the bacon without using smoke.
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
- Sides of pork (flitches)
- Forms the meat that is salted, cured and dried into bacon.
- Coarse sea salt
- Draws out moisture and penetrates the meat to preserve and season it.
The step that matters
Rubbing the hot salt over the meat until it absorbs enough. Salt must penetrate evenly to cure the meat thoroughly; uneven rubbing leaves some areas under-salted and vulnerable to spoilage, while over-salting makes the bacon too harsh.
“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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