A Quick Stop to Make Some Bacon
As a part of my journey to understand the differences between bacon in the UK and bacon in North America, I have been making my own. I thought I’d share with you some info on the last batch I made. This round I made 3 types, and a little over 40lbs of the stuff! A quick heads up, I do use nitrates. I think they are pretty important when it comes to cold smoke and avoiding botulism but the nitrates discussion is one for another post.
I started out with a pork belly, which I cut into two pieces and removed the rind (skin from one half)
I chose a Tamworth as it has a nice ratio of meat to fat, I find commercial pork breeds (Duroc etc) too lean and super fatty breeds (Berkshire) to be a little too much so I usually go with Tamworth. This belly will make my complement of streaky bacon.
The side with the rind on I cured in a mix of:
- 2.25% salt
- 0.25% Prague Powder #1
- 0.8% Treacle
- 0.25% Toasted Black Peppercorns
- 0.4% Blend of Juniper Berries, Thyme & Bay Leaves
(All percentages are of the weight of the meat)
This then was rubbed down thoroughly with the cure mix and set into a vacuum sealed bag for 10 days in the refrigerator.
The second piece of belly, the one with no rind, I went for a simple maple cure.
- 2.25% Salt
- 0.25% Prague Powder #1
- 0.8% Maple Syrup
- 0.5% Toasted Peppercorns
- 0.2% Thyme
Again this was coated in cure and vacuum packed, before being placed in the refrigerator for 10 days.
Next I grabbed a loin on section of belly, but unfortunately I chopped it down to make some lonzino before I could get a picture of the whole section so I only have a picture of it ready to get cured.
This went in for a very basic cure of
- 2.25% Salt
- 0.25% Prague Powder #1
- 0.8% Muscovado Sugar
- 0.5% Black Pepper
- 0.25% Thyme
Again it was vacuum packaged and placed into the refrigerator for 10 days. Every day or two I pulled all the bags and gave them a rub and flipped them over to distribute the cure. The wonderful thing about using this method of weighing out your ingredients as a percentage of the meat weight is that you can never over salt your product. Back in the day you had to place it in a box of salt and pull it at just the right time, or (usually) you’d end up with overly salted product.
After 10 days I pulled the bags from the refrigerator and opened them one by one, giving them a quick rinse under the tap.
I took all my newly cured bacon pieces and placed them into my small curing chamber, you can also just pop them on a rack in your fridge uncovered. I rest mine for 2 days to form a pellicle (a tacky surface) before smoking. This is where I deviate from the North American method, I then begin the smoking process.
As it’s the middle of summer cold smoking is difficult to do, so I had to do all this in the middle of the night. Basically you want to keep the temperature in your chamber below 20 degrees celsius and also try and avoid adding extra moisture. So dry chips, no water in the basin in your smoker and most importantly if (like me) you have to use an electric smoker…a separate cold smoke generator is essential.
I smoke for 6 hours at a time in summer and 8 hours at a time in winter, so these went in for 6 hours each day before being allowed to rest in my curing chamber for 18 hours until the next day, where they go back in for another 6. I did this 3 times so they got a total of 18 hours of smoke over 3 days. I started used a blend of apple and maple chips for this.
The next step was to hang the bacon in my curing chamber again at 10 degrees Celsius with 65% RH for a week to allow the smoke flavour to mature and equalise.
Then comes the second best bit…slicing. I use a 10" Omega Slicer
You should be able to see that the bacon isn’t yet cooked and that fat is still lovely and un-rendered. I might do a side by side cook one day to show the difference it makes but my Canadian friends have taken to eating the bacon fat with bread after they cook any!
Finally I vac-packed it all and threw it into the fridge to be eaten over the next couple months.
A few things to remember.
- A happy pig is a tasty pig. You can’t beat happy healthy animals, so source your starting meat well
- Don’t play with your percentages of salt or prague powder, unless you know what you’re doing. It can literally kill you.
- You can go crazy with your cures, I made the wife some maple sugar and cocoa powder (with white pepper, thyme and a bit of chilli flake) for her birthday which was a hit.
