Anyone tried home-cured bacon?

debaser008

Hope this is the right forum...fairly new around here!

Has anyone tried making home-cured bacon? I'd never thought of doing this but in the search for a Secret Santa gift at work I found a couple of kits for it. The reviews are all pretty positive in terms of making something that tastes better than shop bought. I do like this kind of thing, but have only really tried homemade jams/preserves before.

On the subject of cost, the little kits tend to be boxed nicely and include gloves etc. and a pop up timer, whereas you can get the curing ingredients straight from somewhere like Lakeland without any of the other stuff. Any idea what the pop-up timer is for? That's the only reason I can see to buy a kit (at least for Secret Santa purposes), rather than just getting the curing ingredients.

Caterina

I recall when I was little, my mum used to cover chunks of streaky bacon, mostly lard, with salt and pepper and whatnot and kept it to cure, I imagine. But I couldn't tell you how she did it exactly. I was a meat eater then and absolutely loved it, sliced thin and on crusty homemade bread with a bit of sliced onion on top.

ragz_2

We have cured our own Bacon, wet and dry methods. Also smoked it. I got a lot of tips from sausage making forum (Google it). I used a special cure mix as it has the nitrite stuff needed to protect against botulism. I did it the salt only way once but was very salty!

mardatha

I can't help, but have always wanted to taste this ever since I read James Herriot lol

FrugalinShropshire

We did it a few years back using a recipe in HughFW's Family Cookbook and it was fab! The only difficulty we had was slicing it thin enough.

Browntoa

you can get food grade nitrate off ebay


Ive used it to attempt to make salt beef with mixed success