Making Bacon
Posted: 23 Feb 2011, 11:00Following on from my post about making sausages, I thought I would share how I make Bacon.
It really is simple. Falling off a log simple. The Simplest simpleton of Simpletown could do this. Its that simple....well, you get the picture
My piece of belly pork. This cost about £12
Nice and meaty, with a nice sheet of ribs.
Off with the ribs and the skin for cooking later.
Cut up into four pieces, roughly 1kg each
Apply the curing salts. I use a ready made all-in-one cure at the rate of 30g per kg
I then Vac pack it and place in the fridge. If you don't have a vac packer, you can wrap it tightly in clingfilm and place in a zip loc bag. Note: it will produce fluids as the salts extract the water out of the meat. Turn over every couple of days to ensure the salts cover the meat, otherwise leave it alone.
Leave to cure based on thickness – 2 days per ½” thickness + 2 days
I write on when it should be ready. If you go a day or so over its ok, but don’t shorten the time.
When the time is up, I soak the bacon (for that is what it is) for a couple of hours, then pat dry and leave in the fridge for three days to ‘equalise’. Its then sliced and eaten.
The ribs are cooked separately, and the skin turned into pork scratchings.
Nothing wasted, and I end up with about 8lb of Home dry cured bacon which works out at roughly £1.60/lb, PLUS a large sheet of ribs and a bowl full of scratchings.
I buy my cure mix from here
It really is simple. Falling off a log simple. The Simplest simpleton of Simpletown could do this. Its that simple....well, you get the picture
My piece of belly pork. This cost about £12
Nice and meaty, with a nice sheet of ribs.
Off with the ribs and the skin for cooking later.
Cut up into four pieces, roughly 1kg each
Apply the curing salts. I use a ready made all-in-one cure at the rate of 30g per kg
I then Vac pack it and place in the fridge. If you don't have a vac packer, you can wrap it tightly in clingfilm and place in a zip loc bag. Note: it will produce fluids as the salts extract the water out of the meat. Turn over every couple of days to ensure the salts cover the meat, otherwise leave it alone.
Leave to cure based on thickness – 2 days per ½” thickness + 2 days
I write on when it should be ready. If you go a day or so over its ok, but don’t shorten the time.
When the time is up, I soak the bacon (for that is what it is) for a couple of hours, then pat dry and leave in the fridge for three days to ‘equalise’. Its then sliced and eaten.
The ribs are cooked separately, and the skin turned into pork scratchings.
Nothing wasted, and I end up with about 8lb of Home dry cured bacon which works out at roughly £1.60/lb, PLUS a large sheet of ribs and a bowl full of scratchings.
I buy my cure mix from here
