Traditional Bacon Curing: No Nitrates - Just Salt

I'm excited to be showing you how I make bacon the traditional way just salt no preservative about two and a half years ago we switched to a healthier whole foods diet and in doing so we were trying to be more conscious about some of the packaged or store-bought meats we were getting but on the weekend we'd like to have a little bit of bacon in the morning with breakfast just about all the bacon that we had come across in the groceries even some of the natural groceries it was just conventionally raised bacon which was that GMO corn and soy it was injected with preservatives just the stuff we were trying to avoid every once in a while we would find one of two brands of bacon at the natural grocery that was uncured and non-gmo but it was expensive and not always available when we started ordering pastured pork the whole hog directly from farmers we would get the option to have two huge pork bellies that we could cure out ourselves it was about two years ago that I ordered a copy of the butcher salt bacon curing precept the farmstead meats --mess has printed versions of all of their precepts or you can order an individual chapter in this case bacon as a PDF download so I got the bacon precept and read it and learned everything I need to know about curing pork belly and turning it into bacon the natural and traditional way in the butcher salt the curing agent is simply salt and sugar those two ingredients nothing else the first few times that I cured the pork belly I use that salt and sugar recipe fellow ever since run the primal diet and we try to avoid the addition of any sugar I student omitted the sugar from the recipe and I go straight 100% salt the purpose of the sugar primarily is to offset the saltiness that the salt brings to the meat so the way I'm curing the pork belly now results in a little bit more salty flavor than the way I used to do it with the sugar if you're looking to try this at home and you don't want an extra salty flavor and you don't mind the sugar I would look into using the sugar as well the process I'm about to show you is so simple and it provides such a superior product in the end so if you really like bacon you're definitely going to want to give this a try all right let's get into it during bacon the traditional way here's what we use to cure our bacon first need a pork belly size this one I'm using is from a Tashard Pig supplemented with a non-gmo grain and finished on Apple it's really important to start with high quality pork due to the modern conventional butcher practices it is difficult to source pork belly with the skin on still so this side doesn't have skin on it you might be more familiar with this view of the pork belly that looks like bacon there doesn't this is my curing vessel I'm just using a 9 by 13 Pyrex baking dish it is important to avoid using metal curing vessels so the salt doesn't react with the metal and speaking of salt I use an extra coarse sea salt using the coarse salt lessens the amount of the salt that gets absorbed into the meat if I were to use a fine salt it is likely that the bacon would be too salty in the end I want to draw the moisture out of the bacon without having much of a salt absorbed into the bacon so that's it just three items that is all we need in order to make this the concept here is to salt the pork the salt sitting on the meat will absorb the moisture out of the pork and all of this process it's all about getting the moisture out moisture is the enemy moisture is where the bacteria breathe that can cause foodborne illnesses if we remove that moisture we remove the possibility of us getting sick from it if we remove the moisture from the pork it preserves it naturally gives it a long shelf life and doesn't even require refrigeration at that point this Billy has some hair embedded in it still I start by exercising the hair with my phone [Music] once the five o'clock shadow is removed and slice the slide into two pieces of system occurring the absolutes now the third piece will make a roast I always make of pork bill euros I'm baking during day it's like favorite part people love that you're interested in learning how to make the ropes that I make here's the link to a video I made about it I sprinkle a layer of salt from the bottom of the curing vessel trying to get an even distribution ready to introduce the belly to the vault best practices for the skin or the fat side of the belly - face down on the bed itself next I seasoned the top of the pork belly with salt this is a little heavier application and actually needed but it's okay now I stack the other piece of belly on top of the first one and apply salt into the refrigerator it goes and I'll check back on it in 24 hours day 2 of the Cure you can see here all the fluid the salt has drawn from the pork this is a sign of really good progress there's also moisture coming out of the top of the belly it is looking really good so far from here I repeat the same process as yesterday I felt a fresh curing vessel and transfer the piece of pork that was on the top of the first settle to the bottom of the freshness there are some areas on the top that are devoid of salt so I apply some more in those spots I don't apply salt the entire piece again just the spots that you get now I stack the other belly on top you can really see the work the salt is done on the pork I apply more salt in my needed areas of this one as well and then back to the refrigerator with it for another 24 hours day three the entire process is repeated again I look for the spots that need more salt as you can see here the fluid accumulation is a lot less than what it was on day 2 the salt is still doing its job well it is just that there is less moisture for it to extract I want to see less and less moisture each day until there is no more fluid in the vessel after rotating and salting the belly it goes back into the refrigerator for another 24 hours days for its making really good progress now the pork is getting firmer which indicates moisture loss this is really good so I just repeat the process again as I did the last couple days and back in the refrigerator I'm going to fast-forward us today 8 day 8 and we now have bacon I know it's ready because there is no fluid accumulation in the vessel this pork belly took eight days to cure but there are several variables that affect the speed of curing the breed of pig size of the pork belly the diet of the page and humidity so there's not a set formula or the time it takes to cure I've had bellies take up to 12 days to care before Yeltsin though the pork belly is done when it's really sperm will fuel not sloppy I've got a little gift to it but it's fairly firm now I need to wash off the excess salt I just run it under the water in a sink [Music] once the salt is off I've had it dry in a towel [Music] now is the time we've been waiting for it's time to slice up some of that bacon and he would [Music] [Applause] [Music] the best way I have found to cook bacon is in the oven it comes out evenly to play in the skillet it easy to have some parts over closed and other parts undercooked I put the slices in a baking dish and roasted at 350 degrees Fahrenheit to approximately 25 minutes [Music] a little buddy you ready for he says of our bacon nothing salty look really good now that I ve eaten and enjoyed some really fresh delicious bacon I have three options for going forward one is I can store the bacon back in the refrigerator I can just put it in a fresh baking dish and put it back in the refrigerator for storage option two is I can use a bacon hanger the bacon hanger as you may have guessed it is for hanging bacon these prongs here are sharp ended and make it easy to pierce through the meat throughout a slight upward angle to hold the meat on there once the meat is pierced through this look at the top can hook around a small beam or a hook from the ceiling like this and as I mentioned earlier the way I cured this bacon makes it to wear does not require refrigeration all the moistures out there's not a chance of spoilage at this point so I can hang it at room temperature as long as it is in a drafty area and not in a high moisture area such as over a kitchen sink the third option for me at this point is theoretical I could smoke it if I had a smoker I don't have a smoker or smoke house anything like that right now so I'm not able to smoke it but theoretically once the belly is cured bacon I can hang it and do a real cold indirect smoking of it for several hours after smoking then it can either again be hung at room temperature or go back in the refrigerator all this talk about bacon has me wanting some right now so I'm going to go make some enjoy some bacon thank you for watching this video if you guys give this a try at home leave a comment below let me know how it turns out check out farmstead meat smith.com and go to their store on their website and you can and you can purchase and download the bacon presets or better yet get the whole butcher salt it's a wonderful read and that way you have a written copy of this it's really worth the read if you like this sort of video please consider subscribing to our Channel and share it with your friends we greatly appreciate that thank you for watching [Music]

Channel: The Grass-fed Homestead

Views: 1,054,296

Keywords: how to cure bacon, how to make bacon, how to cook bacon, best way to make bacon, best way to cook bacon, traditional bacon curing, how to cure bacon without preservatives, how to cure bacon without nitrates, natural bacon curing, curing bacon with salt

Id: g55zobFpHcA

Length: 14min 11sec (851 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 19 2017