Good Ol' Fashioned Bacon

I love to prepare and cook things that are a bit out of the ordinary and while bacon is by no means unusual, home-cured bacon definitely fits into that category.

We've been experimenting with a few different curing methods. Well, okay, we haven't gotten all that adventurous. So far we've only tried the standard brown sugar/salt method and a variation with black pepper. We also did the standard open-air curing and we tried the zip-locs-in-the-refrigerator method.

We Loved the black pepper variation and prefer the open air curing to curing in the 'fridge.

In the future (like, maybe the next time we butcher a hog) we'd like to try both maple (and/or honey) curing and smoking the bacon.

In any case, the basic curing is very simple, tastes great and is good for you. Next time you pick up bacon at the grocery store read the ingredients and you may decide to try curing it for yourself ;)

Gabriel trimmed this piece of pork prior to adding the curing mix.

Here you see the pork ready to begin curing next too all of the ingredients.

three parts brown sugar, two parts salt and one half part black pepper.

Rub this all over the pork and shake off the excess.

I snapped this sloppy photo while the pork was curing.

We lined cardboard boxes with parchment paper, sat those on a tarp and let it cure for seven to ten days. We did this in our spare bedroom closing off all of the vents and opening the window.

You can also put it in zip-loc bags in the refrigerator. It works just as well but doesn't dry out as much making it harder to work with when you go to slice it.

The finished product.

After the seven to ten day curing period the bacon can be frozen. Because salt dries the meat as it cures it becomes less prone to dangerous bacteria and so it really doesn't have to be frozen. As long as the parchment paper is changed (or preferably the meat is hung so it gets air circulation on all sides) and the meat is turned so that it doesn't stay wet on the bottom it

should be fine.

I recommend freezing it however because the longer it cures the saltier it becomes.

Plus it's always better to be on the safe side when it comes to meat.