Home Cured Bacon

[Toadflax]

Not strictly bushcraft, but we recently made some home cured bacon using the Hugh FW recipe from his River Cottage book. Very tasty, especially when cooked on my hobo stove at the bottom of the garden .

Apart from being cheaper than the equivalent weight of bacon from Tesco (which is probably stuffed full of water) it did seem much nicer. Pork loin plus cure ingredients were about £12, and the same weight of cured bacon from Tesco would be about £18.

Now we want to some more and my daughter wants to do maple cured bacon (as we have a couple of big bottles of maple syrup). Just wondered if anyone had any recipes for a maple cure mix. I guess we could experiment and replace all or part of the sugar from the original cure mix with maple syrup.


Geoff

 

[jon r]

Is this like Pork jerky or something? Is pork safe to jerky?

Sounds nice, and i like your little stove!

 

[clcuckow]

Is this like Pork jerky or something? Is pork safe to jerky?

Sounds nice, and i like your little stove!

No its just bacon how it used to be made!

On pork jerky I have read both that it is and is not safe. But it most of the latest US stuff it says it is safe as long as you treat it for the trichinella parasite by basically freezing it for a month (the same advice is usually given for wild venison).

 

[Matt Weir]

No its just bacon how it used to be made!

On pork jerky I have read both that it is and is not safe. But it most of the latest US stuff it says it is safe as long as you treat it for the trichinella parasite by basically freezing it for a month (the same advice is usually given for wild venison).

But that kind of defeats the object doesn't it? I mean, to jerky meat is to preserve it when no other methods are available. If you can freeze it then why bother to jerky it in the first place?

 

[Toadflax]

It is interesting that curing bacon, which was a means of preserving meat, is now pretty much a food preparation method in its own right - i.e. with freezers, there is really no need to cure bacon, but it is still done because we like the taste of bacon (like smoked salmon, etc. we do it now because we like the taste rather than because we need to preserve the food).

The litlte stove is an old baby milk powder can that I used to keep my pumbing fittings in until I needed a tin for a stove, turned into a stove as shown here: http://wings.interfree.it/html/sstove.html.


Geoff

 

[clcuckow]

But that kind of defeats the object doesn't it? I mean, to jerky meat is to preserve it when no other methods are available. If you can freeze it then why bother to jerky it in the first place?

Once you have dried the jerky it keeps like any other jerky and you can make it without freezing first but you run the risk of getting the disease caused by the Trichinella parasite.

We should be OK in the EU and there is an EU regulation (extract below)

(2) In addition to those rules, more specific requirements should be laid down for Trichinella. Meat of domestic swine, wild boar, horses and other animal species may be infested with nematodes of the genus Trichinella. Consumption of meat infested with Trichinella can cause serious disease in humans. Measures should be put in place to prevent human disease caused by the consumption of meat infested with Trichinella.

 

[Ketchup]

I suppose that when your meat is salted heavily enough, it will kill any nematodes. It works for fish, why not for porc?
Is there any vet out there?

Oh yes, and then there's this:Make your own pancetta I found it really instructive, there are at least three video's.

 

[clcuckow]

I suppose that when your meat is salted heavily enough, it will kill any nematodes. It works for fish, why not for porc?
Is there any vet out there?

Oh yes, and then there's this:Make your own pancetta I found it really instructive, there are at least three video's.

Yes salting is supposed to work but I don't know if a normal jerky marinade would be sufficient since the pork jerky recipes that I have read suggest freezing first.

 

[Tengu]

But where is the recipe then?

 

[Toadflax]

Which one? I'll look up the bacon recipe if that's what you are after.

 

[Tengu]

Yes, please

 

[Toadflax]

Get a piece of pork, about 1.5 Kg: loin, spare rib or thick end of belly.

Make up the dry cure mix: 2 bay leaves, 10 juniper berries, 500g coarse salt, 100g soft brown sugar, 10g coarse ground black pepper. Chop the bay leaves, crush the juniper berries and mix all the dry ingredients together.

Rub one or two handfuls of the mix all over the piece of pork until it is thoroughly salted all over then put the pork into a tupperware (or similar container) in the fridge and leave for a day.

Cover the rest of the dry cure mix to keep it clean and dry.

After 24 hours, put the pork on a board, and pour away any liquid that has accumulated in the tupperware. Rub another couple of handfuls of the dry cure mix over the pork and put it back in the fridge for another 24 hours and repeat the process again.

We did this for 5 days, though it was a bit salty so I would recommend only doing it for 4 days. On the final day, rinse the mix from the pork and hang it up to dry for 24 hours.

Then eat it!!!

We found that the outermost couple of slices were very salty and we also found that frying it (rather than grilling it) tended to take out some of the saltiness (maybe the oil used in frying absorbed some of the salt).

Hope you enjoy it as much as we did.



Geoff

PS: I would like to try maple cured bacon next so we plan to replace all or part of the sugar with maple syrup.