Sweet Dry Cured Pork Belly (bacon)

The word bacon originally meant salted pork.  Any piece of pork cured with salt.  Now the word is starting to mean any piece of cured and sliced meat regardless of animal.  I can't wait to try rabbit bacon.  But the point of this posting is to not discuss the history of bacon and the words etymological roots, rather to discuss my own first attempt at makin' da bacon.

Five days ago i stopped in at the local butchers, and by local I mean the independant style butcher.  The chiller unit about 30 years old and meat cut to order on a large block of wood.  The place has an indefinable "meaty" sort of funk in the air and the lighting is rather dim.  A traditional style butcher of the sort that have the best cuts of meat if you just ask.

I asked if he had any pork belly and he rummaged around in the chiller and came back with a strip about half a metre long and about ten centimetres wide.  Nearly 2 kilos was the starting weight and there were some of the ribs still attatched which he trimmed without being asked. I took the belly home and made up a dry cure as per the recipe below.

I applied the cure, rubbing it reasonably hard into the pork belly which I had cut into 3 equal lengths.  I stacked the 3 lengths on top of one another and sprinkled extra cure in between the layers and covered with  a damp teatowel and placed in a ceramic dish.  In the morning after about 12 hours of curing in the fridge there was about 1/4 cup of liquid in the bottom of the dish which i poured off.  I swapped the pieces around, placing more cure in between and moved the bottom one to the top and the middle to the bottom.  Another 12 hours I repeated the process.  Then once every twenty four hours for 4 days, draining off any salty liquid that accumulated.

At this point the belly pork is quite salty but not too bad.  Before testing I made sure that the cure was rinsed thoroughly off and fried it over a medium heat.  And boy what a flavour.  Tonight I am going to make Pumpkin Bacon and Scallop Risotto and since I will use hardly any of the bacon I will pre-slice it and free-flow freeze it and vacuum seal it in our bag sealler.  Thay way we can use just what we want, when we want it.  Also I can cut it to whatever thickness I want, from lardons to paper thin.  Next purchase, a meat slicer.

Ingredients

500 grams salt.  I used empire rock salt
125 grams bron sugar
10 whole pepper corns

Optional
1-2 bay leaves finely chopped

Method

In a food processor, blitz on high until well combined.  The salt should have a mixture of large chunks and fine salt particals.

Rub the cure into the surface of the bell, concentrating three quarters on the meat, and one quarter on the rind. 

Leave in the fridge for 5-7 day, applying regular coatings of the cure and drainging of the excess liquid.

Blogged with Flock