Bacon!

A post on one of the forums I frequent started me down this journey, the whole process looks so simple I’d be crazy not to give it a try. This lead to further research showing that home made sausages and salami should also be possible… Lacking a sausage maker, mincer or other necessary utensils I figured I might as well get started on the bacon, besides who doesn’t love bacon. My first step was to buy 200g of Prague powder cure #1, which is salt mixed with sodium nitrite and dyed pink. The pink colouring helps distinguish it from normal salt because in large enough doses sodium nitrite can kill a person! You don’t have to use the curing powder but it helps kill the nasty bacteria that forms in pork. A quick search on TradeMe put me in touch with a seller of Prague powder. This arrived on Friday which was excellent timing since I’m in Australia next week giving time for the meat to cure. Saturday I shot off to the local butcher to pork belly, unfortunately they only had one pack left and when I got home I found it still had a good portion of bone on it! Which is a disappointing start. Never mind, Sunday morning I de-boned the belly, mixed up the curing salt (for 900gm of meat): 2 Table spoons sea salt 2 Table spoons cane sugar 1/2 teaspoon Prague powder Pepper Cut the meat into two portions, covered then in the salt mix making sure get as much as possible covered then placed them in glad bags and into the fridge where they will be left to cure for a week or more. The left over bones will be cooked for lunch today so I coated them in a marinade and let the sit before they get grilled: Honey Sweet soy sauce clove of garlic Next time I think I will not use sea salt, or at least grind it into a finer powder, since it was quite grainy and I’m worried that it will take longer to dissolve into a brine now. Some useful links: Online converter - Weight to Volume Cure Calculator From Belly to Bacon