Dry Cured Bacon - Recipe, Tutorial and Calculator
I've written before about curing bacon and given a recipe for what is a fairly low salt product. Whilst there is nothing wrong with this bacon, I increased the salt slightly when I wrote a tutorial on 'beginners' bacon curing for the sausagemaking.org forum. I have subsequently increased the salt level I use in my own cures again and realised that I haven't even mentioned doing so on this blog. So, here's an updated version of the tutorial I posted, including an online calculator for the cure posted on the sausage making forum, with the optional addition of vitamin C which minimises any risk from the cure. My favourite bacon cure has slightly more salt than even this one does. It can be found here.
Let's Make Bacon!
Cure suppliers
Details of cures and suppliers can be found on this page.
Cleaning/Hygiene
Pay attention to hygiene; keep everything clean and safe. Ensure work surfaces and cutting boards are clean. You may wish to use plastic gloves when handling curing salts.
Choice, Size and Source of Meat
Your meat can be from the supermarket, local butcher, or direct from the farm-shop or farm. You can cure as much or as little as you want. Remember though, the better the meat: the better the bacon – for this reason, many people choose rare-breed or free-range meat. However, for a first project, a joint from the supermarket is fine. If something goes wrong it won’t have cost you the earth!
You'Â’ll need:
For Streaky Bacon – a boned joint of belly pork
For Back Bacon – a boned joint of loin of pork
In the supermarket both of these are likely to be rolled and tied with string. Remove any string and unroll the meat.
It should be noted that the rashers from these joints are smaller than those of commercial bacon as smaller pigs are used.
The Dry Cure
For this guide we will pretend we are dry curing a piece of meat weighing 1930gm (1.93kg/4.24lb).
For each 1kg of meat we need:
18.5gm Salt
10gm Sugar
2.5gm Cure #1
0.5gm Sodium ascorbate (optional)
The sugar can be one of your choosing white, brown, Demerara or even honey or maple syrup. The darker the sugar: the stronger the flavour. A mixture of white and Demerara, or light brown sugar, makes tasty mild bacon.
Weigh your piece of meat and calculate the amount of cure you need...
If you have accurate scales:
For our 1930gm (1.93kg) example, thatÂ’s:
Salt 18.5gm x 1.93kg = 35.7gm
Sugar 10gm x 1.93kg = 19.3gm
Cure #1 - 2.5gm x 1.93kg = 4.8gm
Sodium ascorbate 0.5gm x 1.93kg = 0.97gm
...or you can use this cure calculator:
You can add any herbs and spices you fancy. A sprinkle of black pepper and thyme keeps things simple.
If you donÂ’t have accurate scales:
Make up a batch of cure:
Salt 185gm
Sugar 100gm
Cure #1 - 25gm
Sodium ascorbate 5gm (optional)
Now, ensuring itÂ’s well mixed (you could grind it in a clean coffee grinder, if you have one, to make sure) use 31gm per kg meat. So in this case that would be 31gm x 1.93kg = 59.83gm (60gm to make it easier to weigh).
You can add any herbs and spices you fancy. A sprinkle of black pepper and thyme keeps things simple.
Other bacon cure calculators for different types of bacon can be found in the Cure and Sausage Calculators post
Applying the Cure Mix to the Meat
The amount of cure mix may seem a lot less than you expected. DonÂ’t add more, thatÂ’s how itÂ’s meant to be.
Sprinkle about 80% - 90% of the cure mix onto the flesh side of the meat and rub well in, getting into all the folds and crevices. DonÂ’t forget the ends. The remainder is sprinkled onto the skin/fat side and rubbed in well.
Now put the meat, along with any cure that fell off whilst you were rubbing it in, into a food grade bag, or wrap it well in cling film. In fact it's easier to put the meat into the bag and then rub the cure into it! Put it into the fridge; on a tray’s best, just in case it leaks. Every day or two turn it over and give it a bit of a rub; you can do this ‘through’ the bag without opening it. Don’t worry if liquid comes out of the meat. It often, but not always, does. Just leave it all in the bag.
How Long Do I Leave It For?
The standard advice is to cure the meat for 1 day for each ½ inch (13mm) of thickness, plus two days. So for a piece of supermarket belly like ours, about 1½ (39mm) inches deep, thatÂ’s going to be 3 days + 2 days = 5 days total.
Don’t lose sleep about the curing times. Unlike older curing methods, this type of cure is not time critical, it won’t be too salty if you leave it longer than the calculated time – so it’s always best to err on the side of caution. If in doubt leave it a little longer.
You may notice, because youÂ’re bound to take a peek, that it doesnÂ’t appear to have changed colour. ThatÂ’s normal. The outside colour is deceiving. If youÂ’ve followed the instructions itÂ’ll be lovely red bacon when you cut into it.
Wash and Dry
At the end of the curing time rinse the bacon in cold water and dry it with a clean cloth or paper kitchen towel. It then needs to dry out a bit before use. ItÂ’s best hung in the fridge, but this can sometimes be difficult. If you canÂ’t hang it, try and place it in the fridge where the air can get all around it, maybe on the fridge shelf, with something underneath to catch any drips. Leave it for a couple of days to dry, then slice, cook, and enjoy!
Storing Your Bacon
This is not 'old style traditional bacon' that can be hung in the rafters all winter; that needed a couple of days soaking before use to remove the excess salt. Keep it in the fridge for up to a couple of weeks or freeze whole, or in slices, for 1 to 2 months. If you Vac-Pac it, you can keep it longer but it must be kept it under 5C or frozen.
There are 42 comments
Assuming that you’re not concerned about having nitrate in your bacon there’s no reason why you can’t.
Nitrates: Ive read as widely as I can on the subject. I understand it takes bacterial action to convert to nitrites. Does this occur without bacteria in dry cured bacon?
The bacteria referred to is not something that’s added to the meat, it is naturally occurring bacteria in the meat.
I have been given a 250gm bag of food grade Potassium Nitrate (KNO3). If I were to add 5.88gms of this to 84.12gms of salt would this result in 100gms UK Cure #1?
Regrettably not. Cure #1 is sodium nitrite mixed with common salt, not Potassium Nitrate. What you have is saltpetre which can be used for curing but requires very accurate scales to do so safely. Mixing it in bulk is not a good idea as different grain sizes can lead to uneven settlement and a chance of using dangerous levels of the cure. Cure #1 is not only mixed together but it is mixed as a solution and then vacuum dried to ‘bond’ the two ingredients.
If you want to cure bacon with your saltpetre, you would be best to post a query on http://forum.sausagemaking.org/ where I or someone else can advise you further. (It’s just easier to do it there rather than in these comment boxes).
However, you would be best get cure #1 to use for your bacon and save the saltpetre for longer term curing projects like salami etc.
Hope this helps
Many thanks Phil. I’ve tried joining the aforementioned forum but haven’t yet received an “activation” email from them. BTW, I have a precision 200 gram mass balance with a 0.001 gram resolution!
questions: after drying the pork belly is it now ready to be smoked?
can you remove the skin and cure the belly? or would you have to use less dry cure?
will this cure work if you vacuum seal the belly?
Yes, this bacon can be smoked as soon as it is properly dry on the outside. Hang it somewhere cool and airy to do this.
Yes, it can be vacuum packed during curing.
This cure is below the maximum nitrite allowed whether it is skin-on or skin-off, so you will be fine.
I hope this helps
Hi
I have some Cure#1 from Australia which says it is 2% nitrite. Do I just increase the amount proportionately to give the same final concentration?
Yes, you would increase the curing salt to 7.5g per kg and reduce the salt by 5g per kg to 13.5g per kg.
Hey Phil I’m doing up a couple more sides of belly, this time with sodium erythorbate. I was still going to go “a day per 1/2” plus two” for a cure time but with the accelerator can I safely go less?
Thanks, Dan
I have some maple sugar and would like to use this, would I just swap it for the amount of sugar from the calculator.
Yes, I’d just replace the sugar with maple sugar. After trying the bacon, you can then adjust the amount in future batches to get the exact flavour you want.
I want to use a fairly thick, boned, middle cut of leg for making gammon steaks. I would prefer to dry cure it. Could I use the above recipe for doing this? I would still stick to the 1/2 inch per day 2 and appreciate it would take a lot longer to do, but would it work please?
Hi Liz, I don’t see why not, assuming that you want gammon with the same salt/sugar levels as this bacon. However, I’ve never done it with this cure.
I’d try and get cure inside the joint where the bone has been removed and cure it for a good long time, maybe a couple of weeks. Then hang it for maybe a week to let the cure even out throughout the meat.
I’d probably use the slightly saltier cure here: http://www.localfoodheroes.co.uk/?e=561
That said, these are just ‘thoughts off the top of my head’!
Please let me know how you get on.
Thanks for your thoughts on this, I think I will give it a go. You say you’ve never done it with this cure, do you have one you would recommend? I would prfer to dry cure, however if you know of a wet one that works really well I would be interested in trying it.
I can’t see any reason not to dry cure it but would use this cure:
http://www.localfoodheroes.co.uk/?e=561Cure fresh meat for a minimum of 2 weeks in a fridge, plus 4 – 7 days hanging to ‘equalise’, or on a non-metal grid (also in the fridge). You may need to wrap it in waxed paper or greaseproof while it f dries to stop it going to far.
Good luck!
Hi,
I am using E250 a prepared curing salt mix I obtained in France. For a traditional bacon dry cure, how many grammes per kilo of meat should I use please
Hi Rob
E250 is sodium nitrite – the same chemical as in cure #1. If it’s French, the chances are that it’s ‘sel nitrite’, a mix with 0.6% sodium nitrite and as such you will need ten times the amount than you would cure #1, so you won’t need any salt (the other 99.4% of the cure being salt!). Please check with the supplier first though to ensure that I have guessed correctly.
Hi, Thanks for that Phil, at least I know what I am dealing with and yes you are right the E250 I have bought is a mix of 0.6% sodium nitrite and salt. So for the mathmatically challenged, (me)!) precisely how many grammes of this mix alone would I need per kilo of pork to produce a dry cure bacon please. cheers
Sorry for the delay, you’ll need 25gm per kg for a good cure level. No added salt as the salt will already be about 2.49%.
HTH
Phil
You’re a star Phil, will get stuck in today, if all goes well will then try your black ham receipe, looks delicious. Many thanks again, Rod
Hi, I’m confussed, I plan on haveing a go at curing bacon and making ham next week, I thought I understood the process now I don’t can you explain this:
Cure 1 – on the web site it appears to say you can only using for brine but I have seen it used in receipes for both brine and dry cure
Cure 1 – do you use cure 1 with table/cooking salt instead of curing salt???
Any help?
Hi
I’m sorry for any confusion: cure #1 can be used in dry curing and in brines, but the cure recipe above can only be used for dry curing.
Cure #1 is used with salt, this could be table or cooking salt, but an additive free salt such as sea salt would be much better. You must not add further curing salt otherwise the level of nitrites will be too high.
I think the confusion is that some curing salts are complete curing salts – you add nothing to them. They are good if you like the level of salt that the manufacturer has used. Cure #1 is not one of these – you control the level of added salt yourself.
I hope that this helps.
Thanks v much for this. Tried maple syrup bacon but the amount used doesn’t add much flavour at all. Can I increase the maple and keep all else the same or add post cure? Thanks, Tim
I know that some use maple syrup powder http://www.amazon.co.uk/Maple-Syrup-Powd.. but it’s frighteningly expensive.
You could increase the ‘sugar’ amount or apply it post cure. However, fry it carefully as it may burn more easily.
Hi Phil. I would like to open with a big thanks for your informative site.
I have been curing with brine for some time now and have just made my second dry cure bacon batch using your recipe and have to say, a great success.
Do you have any other tips for slicing though. I have a small slicer for hams but even after drying it tends to slice unevenly.
Hi
What a great forum!!! I really want to make some gammon. Am absolute beginner at this- can u help?
Hi Claire
For gammon/ham joints, just use one of the ham recipes here.
By gammon though, I assume that you mean gammon for slicing thickly and grilling/frying? You need a recipe that’s more like bacon for that. I haven’t posted one here, but I know that a guy over at http://forum.sausagemaking.org has made it.
I hope this helps
Also ( sorry) I don’t know what cure1 and 2 is??
Please see http://www.localfoodheroes.co.uk/?p=equi..
Thanks! Yes the English style gammon that is like a thick bacon. Can you make it without nitrates?
Yes, you can, but it will be more like a thin slice of fried pork if you dou
can I recommend if your note sure of quantities/ingredients contact Wesenfelders of Middlesborough.They do excellent cures and seasonings and do mail order.I have lived in Thailand for 9 years and the absence of supermarkets and English food suppliers decided to make my own sausages and then bacon. They are very friendly and advice is only a phone call away. Hope this helps. Kind regards.
Thanks Tim. I don’t make chicken ‘bacon’, but I’m sure that there’s no reason why you couldn’t use this recipe to do it.
hi. this is my first time having a go at curing pork. im a little confused about the ingredients for the curing mix. do i use kosher salt and brown sugar only or do i need to add another type of salt to the mix too.
I’m guessing from your reference to kosher salt, that you’re in the US. You can obtain the Cure #1 in the recipe above from http://www.sausagemaker.com or a number of other places. This contains the ‘cure’ that gives the meat its colour.
Can prague powder #2 be substituted in this or other recipes for bacon?