Has anyone tried curing their own bacon?

Page may contain affiliate links. Please see terms for details.

slowmotion

Quite dreadful
Location
lost somewhere
There's a whole load of stuff on YouTube about smoking and curing, mainly from rather wonderful country folk in America. It's well worth having a gander.
 
There's a whole load of stuff on YouTube about smoking and curing, mainly from rather wonderful country folk in America. It's well worth having a gander.
How can you cure a goose?
 

Fab Foodie

hanging-on in quiet desperation ...
Location
Kirton, Devon.
Not so. You can cure without nitrates. They do, however, help to kill off bacteria.
Nitrates are there to prevent spore forming bacteria C. botulinum from growing and give the characteristic pink colour nitrosomyoglobin. The salt prevents most food spoilage and pathogen organisms except salt tolerant Lactic Acid bacteria which in the old brine tanks may proliferate and add to the flavour and some slight anti- (pathogen) microbial effect. The Lactic acid bacteria also convert the Nitrate to Nitrite which is the essential molecule.
Bacon, Ham, Salami, Spam, luncheon meat, Corned beef all rely on Nitrates/Nitites. Bacon without Nitrate/Nitrite is basically just salt pork.

EDIT: Look at the Guardian article ....
 
OP
OP
Cycling Naturalist
Location
Llangollen
OK, now I'm on something other than a phone...
I used a half kilo slab of belly pork, skinned. 20 g of salt, 5g of sugar, a few dried herbs and a bit of black pepper. Rub it into the piggywig, and put in the fridge in a largeish container - I used a Tupperware type thing with a lid. Turned it over whenever I remembered, and gave it three days in all. Rinse well, hang up overnight to dry a bit, then I lit three briquettes in the barbie, added some damp applewood prunings, and smoked the bacon for about 30 minutes with the lid on and all the vents shut. Let it cool, then slice into rashers. Fantastic!
It doesn't save any money, but it's not more expensive either, and it's no great effort. Well worth a go.

The sallpetre is added mainly to ensure pinkness. Did your not using it aff
I can't remember whether there's any belly pork left from the half-pig we got a couple of year's back, but I'd vaguely intended to try this with a bit.

@rvw - you're going up to the apple farm again soon.....

Started with the brawn and the ears first then?
 

threebikesmcginty

Corn Fed Hick...
Location
...on the slake
I've battered my own sausage.
 

Broadside

Guru
Location
Fleet, Hants
Nitrates are there to prevent spore forming bacteria C. botulinum from growing and give the characteristic pink colour nitrosomyoglobin. The salt prevents most food spoilage and pathogen organisms except salt tolerant Lactic Acid bacteria which in the old brine tanks may proliferate and add to the flavour and some slight anti- (pathogen) microbial effect. The Lactic acid bacteria also convert the Nitrate to Nitrite which is the essential molecule.
Bacon, Ham, Salami, Spam, luncheon meat, Corned beef all rely on Nitrates/Nitites. Bacon without Nitrate/Nitrite is basically just salt pork.

EDIT: Look at the Guardian article ....
^^ this

We had some Saddleback pigs and tried curing some cuts using salt and sugar mix rather than the 'proper' stuff. The meat did cure but it was definitely not bacon, just cured pork, not very nice. We then got the butcher to give us some of the proper bacon curing mix and it was great. There's more to curing bacon than you might at first think.
 
Top Bottom