The Bacon Cure

You’ve heard of the milk cure and the water cure. Well, we give you now the Bacon Cure.

Seriously though, we’ve four sides of bacon in the freezer from the Three Little Piggies. Yes, I know there should be six sides (after all, a pig has 2 sides) but I had the butcher slice up two of them so we had fresh bacon for our holiday visitors.

The Three Little Piggies Plowing a New Pasture

As I mentioned, these pigs were little. So curing and smoking wasn’t an option. Traditional processing would likely leave the bacon slabs too salty and even smaller than they are already. Don’t want less bacon, now, do we?

So I’d been toying with the idea of brining the bacon sides like you might do a ham or other larger cut. Then I came across this article on Homemade Salt Pork at the The Splendid Table. It sure seemed simpler to me than cooking, cooling, and keeping a brine for curing.

I didn’t have all the specified ingredients and so winged it. Neither did I know the weight of the bacon slab but I’d guess it was larger than the 2-1/2 pounds of the recipe. It was probably more like 5 lbs. Here’s (very roughly) the cure or rub that I mixed up:

• 1/3 cup salt (I used Real Salt but would use kosher or canning salt if I did this again)
• 1/3 cup Sucanat (a.k.a. Evaporated Cane Juice. I don’t keep regular brown sugar around)
• Lots of freshly ground black pepper. I did not measure.
• A couple of crumpled bay leaves. No bay tree on the property as of yet.
• Approximately 1/4 teaspoon each of clove, ginger, allspice, and nutmeg.

The cure was simply rubbed well onto all sides of the bacon slab. I did the rubbing and storing on a large stainless steel platter. I did not sprinkle any of the cure in the platter and just covered the whole thing with Glad Wrap, tucking the ends in under the slab itself. I left it alone for about 3 days.

Side of Bacon with Cure

After the curing was completed, I just cut a chunk off, sliced it as thinly as possible with a knife, and fried it up for breakfast. I must say, it was delicious!! The salt amount was just right and there was a hint of spicy sweetness. Far better than any commercially produced bacon I’ve ever had.

Tiny, Home-Cured Bacon. Delicious!

This is not the sort of cure that preserves bacon without refrigeration for long periods of time. It is more a flavoring agent. In fact, I portioned up the remaining side, wrapped, and froze it for future use.

This was really very simple. I plan to use it on the remaining sides!

January 28th, 2009