Makin’ Bacon! Part I – The Cure

Q.  You mentioned in your last blog about you having an idea to make bacon.  How exactly do you go about doing that?

As you may know from reading my blogs I’m into making my own homemade things that most people just purchase at the store.  I really enjoy making pickles, canning jalapeños, making jam and putting up vegetables.   I’ve been known to make my own sausage, jerk my own beef and recently I’ve made my own bacon. 

The reason I enjoy creating things in my own kitchen is because whatever I make turns out better than what I can buy in the store.  In the case of bacon, it was fairly simple and because it contained no additives, like sodium nitrate, it’s much healthier. 

Another thing that I don’t really like to do is reinvent the wheel, so I took two recipes and combined them – one for the brine to Cure the pork belly  and the other for the method of smoking the bacon in an oven as opposed to using a smoker.  Even then I couldn’t leave it just at that, so I modified the recipes, combined them and created my own. 

So without much further ado – here’s Part I of my methodology for makin’ bacon! 

Ingredients:

• 6 pounds of fresh pork belly. 
• Ask your butcher to cut it into two 3 pound slabs
• 1/2 gallon water
• 6 ounces of Kosher or pickling salt
• 4 ounces dark brown sugar
• (1/2 ounce molasses and 4 ounces of sugar)
• 2 ounces liquid smoke (because I’m not really smoking it)

Curing Method:

1. Mix the water, sugar, salt and liquid smoke in a medium sized mixing bowl
2. Place the pork belly in a gallon zip-log bag or a plastic container with a lid.  Pour as much brine over the meat as will fit in the bag/container.  In a container, you may have to weigh the pork belly down in order for the brine to completely cover the meat.
3. Place in the refrigerator for 72-96 hours.
4. If you’ve put it in a zip lock bag as pictured here, be sure to flip it every day to make sure the pork is fully cured.

Please be sure to watch this space for Part II – in which I’ll cover all the steps necessary to finish the process.

FoodProductLaunch.com has long been something that I’ve longed to do, which is to help as many of you as possible go from Your Kitchen to the Marketplace.  We take the scary out of the process!

TJ Gallivan

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