How to Dry Cure Bacon
If you want to dry cure your own bacon, you may have been worried that the process might be too long, too complicated or too expensive. However, in reality the only thing you need to worry about is the fact that you may find it just plain tedious. You can enjoy delicious bacon seasoned just the way you like it by dry curing your bacon. Does this Spark an idea?
Things You'll Need
- Cooler
- Pork
- 2 kg of salt
- 15 g salt peter
- 200 g sugar
- 2 tbsp. black peppercorns
- Bowl
- Cool area like a garage or a basement
- Tub
- Butcher's hooks
Instructions
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1
Mix up your cure. In the bowl, combine the salt, the sugar, the salt peter and the peppercorns. Mix them together with your hands.
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2
Rub the cure into the pork. Take a handful of the cure mixture and rub it into the meat. Make sure that the meat is covered on all sides. It needs to be in every single crack and slit in the meat or the pork can spoil.
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3
Place the meat in the cooler. If you do not have a cool area like a garage, then you will need to place blue ice in the cooler or refrigerate it. However, you must not freeze it.
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4
Check the meat every 24 hours for 1 to 2 weeks. The longer you cure the meat, the saltier it will be but also the longer it will keep. Every 24 hours you need to remove the meat from the cooler, empty the liquid that has leeched out of the pork, and rub more cure into the meat. Make sure that whichever meat was on the bottom the previous 24 hours is on the top for the next 24.
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5
Soak the meat in clean water. You will first soak the meat for 2 hours, then empty out the water and soak it in new water for another hour.
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6
Hang the meat from the butcher's hooks for 24 to 48 hours. This allows a layer of protein to form called a pellicle, which prevents the meat from spoiling and makes it taste better when it is smoked. At this point, you will have "green" bacon, which can either be smoked or eaten.
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Tips & Warnings
Work with small amounts of pork until you perfect the taste and dry-curing process to suit your palate.
Eating undercooked pork can be extremely perilous for your health. If your dry-cured bacon smells or looks unusual, throw it out and try again.
