Cooking with Jonny69: Home cured bacon

[Jonny69]

Recently one of my friends had a crack at some home cured bacon and I was so impressed with the way it came out and how simple it is to do, I wondered why I'd never done this before. The curing process is quite simple: you take a slab of meat, rub it with salt and sugar and leave it to cure. You repeat this a few times over the course of a few days and then it's done.

I started with a nice chunk of free range belly of pork from the supermarket. This piece is about 600g and cost just over £3:

The rub is quite a simple mix, two parts salt to one part dark brown sugar and for extra flavour I've added ground peppercorns and a little coriander seed. You can also use juniper berries, honey or whatever takes your fancy. Here is about 6 tablespoons of salt, 3 tablespoons of sugar and teaspoon each of peppercorns and coriander seed ground together:

In a non metallic container (I've used a roasting dish) rub the meat generously on the skin side:

Flip it over and repeat on the bottom and sides:

Leave it skin side down, cover and put it in the fridge:

Curing time is largely determined by the thickness of the meat. 25-30mm thick will need about 36 hours and 40-50mm thick will need 48 hours. Go on the average thickness of the piece of meat, not the thickest part.

----

Day 2 is here! As you can see there's a lot of liquid come out the meat and that gets tipped away:

Take the meat out and rinse the outside of the meat under the cold tap and pat dry. You'll see it's firmed up quite a lot and it's a darker colour, less pink than it was:

Now you should wrap it up in greaseproof paper and leave it for 3-5 days to mature, then it's ready to cook!

Edit 1: when I first started this thread I did multiple rubs over the space of a week. We all found it made the bacon a bit too salty. After a bit of experimentation, I found the optimum cure was no more than 48 hours for a piece of pork belly. I've not edited the rest of the thread, so you can read it 'how it was', but bear in mind the bacon will be a bit salty if you make it that way.

Edit 2: back bacon here: http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showpost.php?p=18247862&postcount=170

Edit 3: add saltpetre to the cure: http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showpost.php?p=18247862&postcount=192

 

[Jonny69]

First rub is about a tablespoon on the top and same on the bottom.

 

[Jonny69]

Am I being a bit dense or is that a lot of salt for bacon? Or has it always been like that.

How much bacon will that provide btw?

The salt draws the liquid out the meat and you tip it off. Once the curing is done you rinse the outside of the meat and dry it off and it tastes like normal bacon but better. You can cure it for longer than a few days and it keeps longer but it will then start getting salty. It's pretty much the same as commercial techniques but minus the nasty preservatives and fake bacon flavours.

This should make about 450g of bacon so about two packs by supermarket weight, but it doesn't shrink when you cook it and there's no white slime.

Will any cut of meat do or does it have to be belly/hind?

Any cut apparently

I do a similar thing but I add some maple syrup to my cure. It's quite expensive using maple but it is lovely. In a few months my first Parma ham will be ready and I can't wait.

*drool*

 

[Jonny69]

Chef, mechanic, inventor ..... is there no end to this mans talents ?

I can make a cracking cuppa

 

[Jonny69]

So it'll be a few weeks before you cook it?

One week with a bit of luck

That looks very tempting. Any idea how you'd go about doing smoked bacon, is it hot smoked or cold smoked?

You need to make a smoking cabinet which is on my list of "to do" things at some point. I've seen some home made ones and they are basically a smouldering wood fire at the bottom with a long channel for the smoke to cool in and go into the main cabinet where the meat/cheese/fish/etc is hanging. At the top is a chimney to let the smoke out. This is cold smoking.

 

[Jonny69]

So you rub the salt and sugar in and leave for a day. Next day you tip it all off and do another rub. After 4 days of that it's ready to cook and eat?

That's how I understand it, yes

How are you going to slice it Johnny? Butchers knife?

Yeah, just a sharp knife.

 

[Jonny69]

Day 2 is here and time for the second rub! As you can see there's a lot of liquid come out the meat and that gets tipped away:

I've taken the meat out to have a look at it. First thing I noticed was it's firmed up quite a lot and it's a darker colour, less pink than it was:

On with the second rub then... some of you hardened meat curers have got me worried about the saltyness so I've added some more sugar to the rub mix and I'm going to cure it for 4 days. This is how long my friend did his for and it came out really well. So, rub and return to the refrigerator:

 

[Jonny69]

I want to cut a loaf in half then stick that in the middle and have the worlds greatest manwich!

Oh man that is so tempting, brushed with a little honey and barbqued whole

 

[Jonny69]

I gave it a third rub today. Not much to report really, so no pictures, but the meat has firmed up quite a bit and it's a bit darker in colour

 

[Jonny69]

This is it, the moment of truth! The last step is to tip off the last of the liquid and wash off any remaining rub. Then the meat is patted dry and it's ready to slice and cook:

The end isn't very square so I got my sharpest knife and lopped a dodgy thin slither of the end off for a test rasher. Few holes in it but who cares:

Quick hit in a hot frying pan, smelt absolutely GLORIOUS when frying:

Tasted pretty good, a bit salty, but it was the outside slice so I expect the others won't be so bad. You can see it's quite dark in colour, it has hardly shrunk at all and all that was left in the pan was a little fat that cooked out. It's hard work to cut raw so you'll need a VERY sharp knife and the skin is quite tough to get through. I reckon a ham slicing knife (one of the long thin ones) would make this a lot easier, but for now my deadly meat cleaver will have to do

 

[Jonny69]

How did this turn out in the end jonny?

As a first attempt it's not bad, by no means perfect but I know what I want to do next time. It's a little salty even in the middle and the taste of coriander seed is a little strong for me, so next cure I will be using just salt, sugar and pepper but with a higher ratio of sugar and maybe cure it for less time

 

[Jonny69]

Great advice, cheers

 

[Jonny69]

Check out this fella before I close him up, that's what I'm talking about:

I take it all back, it's not too salty

 

[Jonny69]

after the first salting there was about a mug full of liquid, today there was about 4 tablespoons

so once there is next to no liquid coming off it is ready?

I reckon 3 days with a rub per day and it's done. Like the others said, it gets too salty if you cure it for 4 days or more. Mine is on the limit of the saltiness I can take, which was a salt rich rub for 3 days. Next one I do will be more sugar in the mix

 

[Jonny69]

Awesome

Matblack has some on the go with a higher ratio of sugar in the mix, so we'll have to see how his comes out. I need to get my second batch going tonight because I've eaten all of mine already

 

[Jonny69]

I am looking forward to Jonnys thread on Smoke curing bacon....

This may take some time because I've got to wait until I've got a garden or shed to do it in

Once you've done the rubbing and pouring away parts, can you then portion it up and freeze it ready for use later?

I'm very tempted to give this a try but I don't want to end up eating bacon day after day till it's gone.

Well I've just finished eating mine and it's been just under 2 weeks in the fridge with no signs of deterioration. I just had it wrapped in greaseproof paper. The taste seems to be a bit better after a few days, I reckon because the salt has distributed itself through the meat a bit more evenly. Nothing stopping you from freezing it though.

 

[Jonny69]

Today was day 3 and still quite a lot of juice coming off when I did the final rub just now, tomorrow it comes out of the rub and will be left for a day.

I am considering making a smoker, it is possible to make a cold smoker without the tubing and very cheaply using (of all things) a soldering iron.

MB

Check out here: http://www.smoker-cooking.com/build-a-cold-smoker.html

I think I have a plan hatching along those lines with a 16W soldering iron and a panettone tin.

 

[Jonny69]

I'm going to get a ham knife, I think it'll make cutting a lot easier.

Jbuk, mine didn't go purple but it did get a lot darker and firmer. Edit: what cut did you get?

Damn Sainsburys were out of pork belly so no bacon for me until Sunday

 

[Jonny69]

In which case, yes it was

 

[Jonny69]

Just been doing some reading up on home curing of meats etc and found a post by someone who seemed a little over dramatic, saying not to use table salt as it contains horrible anti-caing agents, and that you MUST use pure salt from a health food shop.

Is this true or is it nonesense?

Well it's true but not critical. I am using cheap table salt as I'm still experimenting and it's cheap, but the sodium levels are higher in table salt because of the anti caking agent.

Anti caking agent is a sodium based ingredient which takes up maybe 1/4 to 1/3 of the volume of table salt but doesn't add anything to the saltiness, so you have to add more table salt to something than you would do pure salt to make it taste equally salty. Because the anti caking agent in table salt is sodium based and you're using more of it, your sodium intake is increased which is no good for your heart.

In the case of curing it's the salt part that does the curing so the purer the salt the better it will be, technically.

I put a fresh bit in yesterday so I'll have nice new bacon to fry this weekend. I used a ratio of two parts salt to one and a half parts sugar and no spices to see how it comes out