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Cook the Book: How to Cure Your Own Bacon

Posted by Caroline Russock, May 18, 2009 at 1:55 PM

Bacon, delicious, crisp, fatty, chewy bacon. Aside from a handful of vegetarians, I have never encountered someone who didn't like bacon. It seems like no matter what time of day it is, there's always a way to incorporate bacon into your meal. Frying up some bacon for breakfast is de rigueur, a BLT makes for a classic lunch, and, of course, bacon cupcakes serve as dessert. Cooking with bacon isn't difficult, but what about curing bacon at home?

According to Eugenia Bone, making bacon at home is relatively easy. In her new book, Well-Preserved, she demystifies the curing process. As it turns out, there is very little to making bacon beyond a spice rub, a lengthy rest in the fridge, and a slow roast in the oven. Besides the bragging rights that making bacon at home will afford you, this recipe is free of nasty nitrates that store-bought bacon often has.

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Bacon

- makes about 2 1/2 pounds -

Adapted from by Well-Preserved by Eugenia Bone.

Ingredients

2 1/2 pounds slab pork belly, skin on (see note)
3 tablespoons pickling or curing salt
1 1/2 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon peppercorns
2 bay leaves
1 large garlic clove, minced
1 teaspoon fennel seed
1 teaspoon caraway seed
1 teaspoon dried rosemary
1 teaspoon dried thyme

Procedure

1. Wash and dry the meat. Place it on a large sheet of wax paper.

2. In a spice grinder, a coffee grinder, or with a mortar and pestle, mix together the salt, sugar, peppercorns, bay leaves, garlic, fennel, caraway, rosemary, and thyme. Grind to the consistency of kosher salt (some of the seasoning ingredients will become powdery - it's okay).

3. Rub the seasonings all over the meat. Place the meat in a large resealable plastic freezer bag. Dump all of the remaining seasoning into the bag and shake it around to distribute it throughout. Refrigerate the bacon, turning the bag periodically, for 7 days. It won't be sopping wet, but you will see puddles of water in the bag. This is good.

4. After the 7 days are up, remove the pork belly, wash it, and dry it very well. Place the meat in a baking dish and cover with plastic wrap or foil.

5. Refrigerate for 24 hours. This allows the salt to distribute evenly throughout the meat.

6. Preheat the oven to 200° F. Pour any accumulated moisture out of the baking dish (there won't be much, if any). Place the meat, uncovered, back in the baking dish. Roast for 2 to 2 1/2 hours, until the internal temperature of the meat is 150° F. The bacon will smell strong and spicy and be brown all over. If you cook the bacon too long, the meat will become tough and the fat will render, creating as much as 1/2 a cup of rendered fat on the bottom of the pan and causing the rind to stick (obviously I've made this mistake). Best to check the internal temperature after about 1 1/2 hours.

7. When the meat is cool enough to handle, cut off the rind. Dry the meat very well and wrap in wax paper before placing in a bag in the refrigerator, where it will keep for about 2 weeks.

8. Cut the rind into chunks and freeze; they add excellent flavor to soups. I like to cut about half of the bacon into 1-cup bags of lardons and freeze them individually; they'll keep for 3 months in the freezer.

Note: Some butchers will sell you a pork belly that has been folded. This does not affect the flavor, but the crease in the rind can cause the bacon to buckle. To avoid this, weight the bacon down during the 7-day curing process. Place the bagged meat in a baking pan and place a smaller baking pan on top, then load on the weight. I use a brick. Every time you turn over the meat, replace the weight.

Photograph: ©iStockphoto.com/Juanmonino

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Tags: bacon, Cook the Book, curing, Eugenia Bone, how-tos, pork, preserving, Well-Preserved