Makin Bacon

I’ve just been working on the meat curing section for my book, so thought I’d share the a bacon recipe here. You don’t need anything special to make good bacon - except good pork!

I’ve been very focused for the last week. It’s amazing how much more focus you can have on writing when that is all you have planned to do! We’re at the beach and have been going for walks most days. Although it’s been cold, windy and rainy so that has been problematic.

I don’t have bacon pictures, but thought a pelican that was on the creek near the beach would suffice - he doesn’t think it’s cold.

I’ve got so much info in my head and in my laptop and in my diaries that I’m trying to organise into a workable book format. I know what I want to achieve and so it’s just a matter of working out how to get it there.

I’m writing a recipe book, that is more than just recipes. I want to include some things about our life. It won’t be a self sufficiency handbook, but will include how we try to be self sufficient. It’s not about homesteading, but will include a lot of things homesteaders do. I will share how I garden and grow food plants. How we manage livestock and then process and eat them. It will be about our subtropical climate and managing a farm and garden using permaculture, organic and biodynamic methods.

All of these things will revolve around the food that can be created. I’ve tried to share some of this on my substack, and now I’m trying to put it all together in a cohesive manner - into a book.

Sometimes I feel like a fraud - who do I think I am to think I could write a book!

I have to keep reminding myself of a few people:

A little while ago a friend who I admire greatly for her knowledge of food and it’s connection to health and wellness said to someone “Lucy knows more about food - the growing and cooking it, than anyone else I know”

Another young Chilean friend sent me this message the other day:

Hi Luci!

I hope you’re doing great, enjoying where you are and the creativity of writing your book.

You know, I wanted to share how I feel with you. Since meeting you, I’ve felt a deep admiration for you and your gift for cooking and preparing healthy food.

On my life’s journey, you are that spark of inspiration for my passion, which is the alchemy of natural creation.

I asked the universe to keep me learning, and today I’m at your house, and I saw a book that excited me because of its content, I started reading it, permission for that.

This prompted me to send you this message”

A recent wwoofer we had, who’d been a chef in a Michelin starred restaurant said that one thing he was going to miss was Lucy’s food! To me, this means that it’s the quality of the food that matters, not what you do to it. This is food as it should be - grown in healthy soil. Healthy soil = healthy food = healthy people.

When I have self doubt and want to self sabotage (a common problem I have) I need to remind myself of these amazing people.

I write for them….and my children and grandchildren.

In the coming months, I’ll share more about what I’m doing, but for this post I thought I’d talk about Bacon.

Everyone loves bacon and most people would think that it’s beyond them because they don’t have a smoker. When I first started making bacon, I didn’t have a smoker. If you are buying bacon and pork from a local free range pork farm, the bacon will just about always be at least half again as expensive as the pork, so by making it yourself, you’re saving money. This alone is enough reason to try it.

My smoker is an electric hot smoker and one of the problems with it, is that to get smoke, I have to have it at a fairly high heat. Too high for the slow cooking that bacon requires, so to get around this, I have a cold smoke generator that I hook into my smoker and then I can cold smoke for a couple of hours, before I start the hot smoking.

This has meant that I’ve been able to get more of a smokey flavour and not cook too hot. Hot cooking means that too much fat comes out. We want the fat to stay in the meat! This led me to think that maybe anyone can make bacon, they can just use the oven and not worry about the smoke. For this to be successful, I think it’s worthwhile curing the bacon with some spices.

After curing the meat, you can use it immediately as you would any bacon. This is called green bacon – which is when you don’t smoke or cook it at all, you just cure it and then slice it and cook it. I sometimes do this before I smoke the bacon and it’s really good.

If you’d like to cook the whole piece and then use it as bacon, you can. Just cook it in your oven as directed in the recipe. If this is what you want to do, at least take some slices first so that you can try the two methods.

If you’re going to try this unsmoked method as an experiment, please make the effort to get a good quality piece of belly pork from a Free Range Farm – ask them for bone out belly. Do not bother if you’re going to use commercial pork. This does not include any nitrate preservative, so once finished, it’s best to be portioned and frozen. Eat within a week.

Bacon dry cure

I usually use just salt when I cure my bacon as I rely on the smoke and the quality of the meat to give it flavour. 3% salt is the required amount of salt. I weigh the meat in a bowl and then the salt, and make sure it’s complete covered with salt, before I vacuum seal it. This ensures a better absorption of the salt and if you use the recipe below, the spice as well. This cure also works particularly well for corn meat.

Weigh the Belly piece – this amount of spice is good for about a 2-3kg belly

3% salt

2 teaspoons peppercorns, crushed

1 teaspoon fennel seeds

1 teaspoon coriander seeds

4 bay leaves

Crush the spices roughly and mix with the salt. Sprinkle over the bacon and place into bags and vacuum seal. If you don’t have a vacuum sealing machine, you can put it into a container. I know that using a container is the ecologically correct thing to do, but completely removing the air does change the way it cures, so I usually vacuum seal.

Leave to cure for 7 days and then remove from the bag and wash off excess salt and spice. Allow to air dry in the fridge for another day or so.

Place in the oven set to 120C. (If you have a smoker, use it – set at about 120C)

It’s ready when it’s between 63-65C internal temperature. It will take approximately 2 hours with either way you cook it. Time depends on the thickness of the belly.

If you’ve made a large piece, cut it into pieces and freeze. I don’t slice my bacon before freezing, because without nitrates, it will go brown as it oxidises.

Note: you can use a piece of loin also, it’s probably just easier to buy a pork belly roast than a loin piece.

Below the paywall is a pdf of the recipe as well as one for a brined bacon or ham.