How to Make Proper Bacon at Home

Step 1 — Making salt pork

Once you are used to it, sourdough is easy, good, and remarkably cheap for what it gives you. This time I want to write about homemade bacon, which is equally easy to do at home.

Bacon is very simple, dramatically cheaper than buying it, and dramatically better. Look at the ingredients on a supermarket packet and you will find a great many additives — plenty of which leave you wondering what they are actually for. Obviously, if you make it yourself, you know exactly what is in it.

So let's make bacon. The usual method is to steep the meat in a brine, but here I will describe the approach of using salt and spices mixed together. This bacon with an egg, in a sandwich made with sourdough, is about as good as breakfast gets.

What you need:

• Piece of pork belly
• Salt (3% of the weight of the meat)
• Spices
• Cling film
• Kitchen paper
• Zip-lock bag

1. It may taste a little salty, but for the sake of preservation use salt at about 3% of the weight of the meat. For spices, add whatever you like of pepper, clove, cinnamon, allspice, chilli or nutmeg. Herbs such as basil or bay work well too. Mix the salt and spices and rub them firmly into the meat, working the fat side especially well.

2. Wrap the salted, spiced meat first in kitchen paper, then tightly in cling film. A fair amount of liquid comes out over the first day or two, so two sheets of kitchen paper is wise. Then put it in a zip-lock bag and keep it in the fridge.

3. Change the kitchen paper and cling film once a day.

4. The salt pork is ready in three to four days.

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Step 2 — Smoking the salt pork

What you need:

• The cured salt pork from step 1
• Smoking chips A handful
• Aluminium foil
• Dutch oven (a deep wok also works)
• Steaming plate

1. Line the base of the Dutch oven with aluminium foil, crumpled once to give it creases. Spread the smoking chips over it.

2. Put the cured pork on the steaming plate, set it over high heat and put the lid on the Dutch oven. If you are using a deep pan such as a wok, cover it with a large bowl so the smoke circulates properly.

3. It is done in about 30 minutes.

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I baked a sourdough loaf with the homemade bacon in it.

Sourdough with Homemade Bacon and Cheese