The secrets of bacon

guardian.co.uk

 

The secrets of home-curing your own bacon

 

 

I love bacon, though I wish I didn't. That hit of meat, fat and smoke is almost enough to make you forget what it's doing to your arteries. But it's unreliable. Far too much is horribly salty, revoltingly woolly, or both. Even supposedly reputable supermarkets pump theirs full of water, as Which? recently revealed. So, a few weeks ago I decided I'd make my own. How hard could it be? A century or two ago, our great-great-whatevers would routinely slaughter a pig every winter and turn it into rashers.

"Bacon's dreadfully easy to make," says Jasper Aykroyd. He ought to know. The "Bacon Wizard", as he calls himself, used to be a chef but now makes his living telling foodies and food producers how to transform pork into pink-and-white gold.

We start out with 4.5kg of good pork belly. This fatty cut is the basis of streaky bacon and ideal for the novice charcutier. Being thin, it's perfect for dry-curing, which essentially consists of covering a bit of pig with salt. By the miracle of osmosis, this is drawn inside to preserve the meat.

How much salt will I need, I ask Aykroyd. Five kilos? Six? I've stocked up in anticipation, but I can borrow more from the neighbours. Judging by some rashers I've eaten, I'll need to.

Er, hardly. What you want to end up with, Aykroyd advises, is bacon that's roughly 3% salt. That means just 30g of salt (any type will do) for every kilo of meat. The other essential is saltpetre, aka potassium nitrate.

This fine white powder – which is also an ingredient in gunpowder – has been used since Roman times to preserve meat, give it an attractive pink colour and transform its flavour. There's some controversy, as with many food additives, but Aykroyd insists it's misguided. "There's vastly more saltpetre in spinach, celery and other leafy green veg." All you will need for home-curing is a fraction of a teaspoonful: somewhere between 0.25g and 1g per kilo. It can be hard to get hold of but if you can't wheedle some out of your butcher, get it online at sausagemaking.org.

Extra ingredients

What else will you need? Sugar: 10-15g per kg for breakfast bacon, twice that for a sweet cure. Herbs are good, too: as much of the fresh variety as you like, but only a sparing amount of the dried: just 6-8g per kg. I fancy a combination of thyme, rosemary and powdered garlic. You're making pancetta, Aykroyd says. Fancy that.

Once you've mixed together all the non-pig ingredients, take a moment to work out how you're going to fit the meat into your fridge. "It's as big as a baby!" one friend helpfully points out. It will need to lie flat, either in a non-metallic container, or well wrapped in clingfilm on something to catch any drips. I decide I will slice my "baby" in two and once I have massaged the salt and herbs into the pork,, making sure I get into all the nooks and crannies, I put each bit in a freezer bag – skin side down – and pop it into the fridge.

Curing and drying

If you've stacked several pieces in the same packaging, you'll need to shuffle them every few days so each gets a turn in the brine that forms at the bottom. Otherwise you can more or less forget about it for a week, at which point you rinse it well in cold water and hang it up in a cool, dry place away from strong smells – a larder or cellar, but not a fridge, which is too damp. If you don't have any meat hooks, pierce a hole in the corner of the pork and thread clean string through it. If flies are likely to be a problem, you'll also need to wrap it in muslin. Make sure the pieces of meat aren't touching.

And that's pretty much it. Leave it to dry for a day, or better still a week, and you should have delicious "green", or unsmoked, bacon. It may develop a powdery white mould, but this is the same harmless variety you'll find on salami. If it bothers you, just wipe it off with a cloth soaked in vinegar. To smoke it, you will need to suspend it in cool woodsmoke for a day or so. This is not impossible – I rigged up a ramshackle smoke-room with corrugated iron and an old barbecue – but it is not essential. Even unsmoked bacon will keep for two or three months as long as you keep the temperature and humidity down. Or you could cheat and stick it in the freezer . . .

I hang mine for a fortnight before slicing off a couple of rashers. They're moist and aromatic, with just the right degree of saltiness; there's a tang of garlic and a hint of herbs. Is this the best bacon I've ever tasted? No, but it's bloody close.

Jasper Aykroyd can be found at baconwizard.co.uk.

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