Curing bacon is not difficult. This recipe is a winner – cold smoked afterwards and then left to mature for a week or two I find it better diced into chunky lumps and used in salads, pastas or with scrambled egg. You can try to slice it and have it in a butty, but it’s not really right for that if you ask me!
Any way you eat it, remember to cook it gently. Blasting it in a pan at high heat will burn it double quick due to the treacle.
One more tip – if you get a big lump of belly (4kg+) you may find one end is meaty and the other is mostly fat. Cure it all and then trim the bits that are more fat than meat afterwards, they are great as added fat to freshly minced beef for incredible burgers!
Black Treacle and Beer Bacon
You can use this handy cure calculator to help calculate the numbers listed below, the salt and cure values are most important.
Ingredients
- 1 lump Meaty pork belly
- 2.75 % Salt