Dry Curing Bacon #2 - Enhancing and personalising flavours in your dry cures

In my simple dry cure recipe I mentioned that it was really just a base from which to experiment. In addition to the basic Salt, Sugar, Garlic Powder, Cure #1 and Pepper that I used there are allsorts of additions you might like to make to get something perfect for your personal tastes! Here are a few suggestions for flavourful additions to the basic recipe.

Brown Sugar Replacements: I have used Maple Syrup (Sirop d'Erable), Honey (Miel) and Molasses (Melasse) with great sucess, in place of the brown sugar of the basic cure recipe. The Maple Syrup in particular gives a very good flavour to any cured meat. With molasses you need to be a little more careful cos although it can be a great addition, it can easily overpower the flavour of the meat.

Chile Powder/Flakes (Piment Moulu): Thoroughly untraditional addition but I quite like adding a little chile powder to my bacon cures. I wouldn't recommend more than a gram per kilo of meat unless you are a hardened chilehead though! 

Onion Powder/Flakes (Poudre d'Oignon): I could have put this in the basic cure recipe really, as its rare that I dont add both Garlic and Onion to dry cure mixes.

Paprika (Paprika/Pimienton): I use a lot of Paprika and have the great advantage of living not too far from Spain. I buy by the kilo and save loads over the price in France. Usually there are three types available, Mild, Hot and Smoked any are useful for curing, adding both colour and flavour. The smoked version is particularly handy for those who like a smoky taste to their bacon but are not equipped or inclined to smoke the bacon itself! 

Allspice (Piment de la Jamaique): An aquired taste and best to use in only very small quantities, as it can be somewhat overpowering. 

Bay Leaves (Feuille de Luarier): I often used to add Bay Leaves to my wet cures but never to my dry ones, but I discovered that crumpling a couple of leaves quite finely into a dry cure mix makes a great flavour addition.

Juniper Berries (Baies de Genevrier): Very nice traditional addition...again dont use too much,  1g per kilo is about max for me...crushed before adding to the cure. Even better you can get some for free anywhere around here on the Causse. 

Marjoram (Marjolane) or Oregano (Origan): I am fortuante to have a large supply of fresh Wild Marjoram in my garden...it's beutiful fragrance is one of the delights...who am I kidding...THE ONLY DELIGHT...when mowing the (what passes for a) lawn with a push mower on a 45° slope!!!!! I digress, Marjoram and Oregano add a lovely fragrance and subtle flavour to lots of cured meats, so are always worth a thought when making up a new cure.

This is by no means meant to be an exhaustive list, just a few of my fav's. Your imagination and taste buds should be your only bounds. If you have a particular fav addition please leave a comment....and I will add the suggestions to the list........and try a few of the new ones out myself!!

Happy Curing

Guy

Dry Curing Bacon #1 - Belly Pork for Streaky Breakfast Rashers

To cure your own bacon you have basically two choices, either wet cure or dry cure. Wet curing is where you submerge the meat in a solution of water, salt etc, whereas dry curing is a matter of rubbing dry ingredients into the meat to cure it. Dry curing isn't particularly dry though actually, as the meat will very quickly start to release liquid. Its my fav method for making bacons and gammons, so I decided to start off the bacon recipes with a simple cure thats ideal for a first trial but gives excellent results.

Dry curing bacon requires just a little more effort than a wet cure but takes up a little less space. I find that dry cures lend the meat a better flavour than the wet cures in most cases, so 90% of my bacons are dry cured and its worth every bit of the extra effort.

The ingredients you use for a dry cure are somewhat a matter of taste and experimentation. A good base though is essential and quantities need to be carefully controlled, especially when using Sodium Nitrite or the propriatory cures powders (Prague Powders or Cure #1 or #2 ).

A good springboard for later experiments is the following recipe. Here I was doing a simple streaky bacon, but the base cure is just the same no matter what cut you want to make into bacon. 

Basic Dry Cure ( for 5 kgs Pork Belly)

100g  Coarse or Medium Grained Salt
20g    Garlic Powder / Granules
120g  Soft Brown Sugar
12g    Cure #1 (Optional)
20g    Pepper

Put ingredients into a large bowl and mix throughly to ensure an even distribution.

It is important to keep your meat cool at all times, removing from the fridge as briefly as possible at each step. Temperature is very important with extended curing times. Cut meat surfaces are vulnerable to bacteria looking for a darn good feed......just as they are to us! Because some curing techniques can take long periods of time to accomplish a stable and healthy product, any bacteria present may get a fair old crack of the whip at those cut meat surfaces. Ok ....the salt and cure powders will be dealing with many of the potential causes of spoilage, but far, far, better to give the bacteria the least chance possible of doing the dirty on you and giving the cure the chance to really work its magic!

The way we accomplish this is by following good sanitary practices and respect as fully as possible what the french call "la chaine de froid".....which means keeping meat at cold temperatures throughout processing and through to consumption. The colder the temperature, the less active any bacteria will be and as a consquencethey will only reproduce very slowly. A good temperature range that will allow the cure to work properly and ensure nasty conditions for those bacteria is between 0°C and 4°C. Most domestic fridges will easily maintain 4°C.

Remove any bits of rib and any blood adhering to the belly. If you want rind off bacon, you can remove the skin now, but you may find it easier to do more neatly after the cure. If you do remove the skin now, it will make for a slightly shorter curing time...without the barrier of skin the cure will penetrate the fat and meat more easily...just take a day or two off the curing time.

Cut the belly into three roughly equal slabs, wash in cold water, towel dry, then pierce the slabs all over with a point.......I use a skewer. This helps get the cure into the meat and channel moisture out of the meat.

Divide your rub by the number of slabs you have to cure...I will usually make three slabs of bacon out of each side, which gives me two good bits for rashers and a third piece for roasting or cutting up into lardons.

Take each slab and apply the cure to all the meaty surfaces...rub a little on the skin if you have left it on, but concentrate the bulk of the cure on the other side and edges. Be careful to evenly apply the cure all over the meat, paying a little extra attention to holes or folds and all around the edges of the bacon to ensure an even cure.

You will need some sort of sealable container to store your meat safely whilst it cures. If you have space in the fridge for a large plastic tub big enough to fit your slabs into, thats just fine. If you have less room in the fridge you can always use a freezer/cooler box instead and store in a cold place. When I use this method I keep a supply of ice blocks in the freezer and use these to ensure a temperature below 4°C is maintained at all times......changing three blocks every 12 hrs is the price to pay!


Pop your slabs into the container and store in the fridge. Placing slabs on top of each other is fine, just change their order when it comes to overhauling the meat.......Hang on an min.....what does he mean overhauling the meat!! Well.... now your bacon is nicely covered in salt and sugar, it will quickly begin to exude liquid...the salt gets to work fast and you will notice a pool of liquid forming in the bottom of the container after just a few hours. Leave this to accumulate overnight, then open your box, take out the slabs and remove the liquid. Quickly rerub the surfaces of the meat with the remaining cure, massaging them helps get the cure in.  Return meat to the container in the fridge, stacking the slabs in a different order, so that its not always the same piece of bacon at the bottom sitting in the juice. Repeat this "overhaul" every 24 hrs, throughout the curing process.



So how long will all this take?

This very much depends on the thickness of the meat and the saltiness/keeping qualities required. Here we are doing a no nonsense unsmoked streaky bacon...using a supermarket bought belly that weighed in at 6 kilos.....once tidied up and deboned (it had a small section of ribs attached) that gave me 5 kgs of meat to cure! The slabs averaged about 4cm in thickness..so, just over an inch and a half.

A good rule of thumb for dry curing bacon is to allow the cure a week for each inch of thickness of meat. This rule of thumb however will give quite a salty result (although not excessively salty) which will give a bacon that is a good keeper, although not heavily enough salted to be stored out of the fridge or for extended periods. I went for 7 days for my 4cm slabs, as I prefer to err on the side of less salt and rely on vacuum packing and/or freezing for longer term storage.

For a first try I would go with the 7 days per inch of thickness rule of thumb and see how you like it from there.

When the waiting is finally over, remove the slabs from the tub and rinse each throughly under running water to remove any remaining bits of pepper, salt and sugar.  Towel dry then place each slab uncovered in the bottom of the fridge or hang in a shed/garage to dry overnight, this allows the salt to stabilise evenly throughout the meat.

The next morning....... I'm guessing that its surely going to be bacon for breakfast!!!!!

It is however better, to resist temptation and leave the bacon a little longer to mature before packing. This can be done either in the fridge or by hanging the bacon in a cold cellar, garage our outbuilding. You can use hangers from your smoker, butchers S's or just bend up some thick gauge wire and make your own bacon hangers (especially handy if you want to go ahead and smoke the bacon you have just made!) Two or three days is fine...in any case, you can always hang two up and start using the first slab right away...........rather!

When doing a whole belly its probably best to keep one slab in the fridge for immediate (within a week) use and freeze or vac pack the rest. Vac packed in the fridge bacon should be good for upto three or four weeks.....in the freezer a good six months.

This base recipe will make a very good bacon as it is, but can also be smoked for extra flavour. More on that later!

Happy New Year

Guy

Saltpeter, Prague Powder and Curing Salts

There is quite a lot of controversey about the use or otherwise of nitrates in curing. Whilst you will find lots of recipes on the net that call for one or other of the Nitrate/Nitrite based products, you will equally find that many list it as optional and yet still others who do not list it at all.

Traditionally Saltpeter ( Fr: Salpetre) or Potassium Nirate has been used in salt cures as an additive or from impure salts found in certain areas from at least Roman times. The addition of either Potassium or Sodium Nitrate was found to enhance flavour and impart a nice, characteristic pinkish colour to meat that would otherwise look dull and brown when cured by salt alone.

Not only were Nitrates found to enhance the cosmetic and gustative quality of a cured product, but its presence in a cure also prevents any risk of Botulism...which is always handy!! Throughout the twentieth century and to the present day nitrates and or nitrites have been added to cured meats to eliminate this potential health risk.

On the negative side though, Nitrates degrade to Nitrites over time. Infact its these Nitrites  that give the desired effects in the meat. The Nitrites though again over time and under certain conditions can lead to the formation of Nitrosamines, which have been found to be carcinogenic in lab animals.

It is for these reasons that a very precise maximum amounts of Nitrates are regulated for use in cured products and should equally be kept to for home curing.

There are a number of ways in which you can find suitable Nitrate/Nitrite products for your home curing. One simple way is by using Salt that has already had the curing agent added to it. These products take any worry out of dosing, they are just used in the quantity called for by a recipe for Salt. In France you can find these Curing Salts, sometimes in Gamm Vert or by mail order from Meilleurdechef.com.......just look out for Sel Nitrité.

You may be able to get some from a local charcuterie...its always worth an ask....they will often give you a small quantity or sell you some for just a few centimes!

I am currently using the curing powders from sausagemaking.org  they carry both Cure #1 and Cure #2. As I can't find Sel Nitraté in my area for some reason, it makes more sense to me to buy the concentrates by mail order from the UK than order 10 kg sacs mail order in France!!

There are many versions of these curing powders available over the net...you may see them called Prague Powder #1 or #2, simply as Cure #1 and Cure#2 or under propriatory marks, most of which are American products that you will not find in Europe. In each case dosages may be slightly different, so please be careful to take the advice on the packet when using in your cures.

In all my recipes that include a cure powder they are listed as optional....I personally do not cure without it but it is by no means essential if you have the right conditions to cure at controlled, healthy temperatures there should be no problems.

Bacon in France!

One thing that ex pats here in France often complain about missing, is a good old traditional rasher of bacon. Be it streaky, middle or back, there is just none to be had over here, excepting from a few enterprising British butchers who have set up shop for themselves!

To be fair there are a few alternatives available, such as what passes for bacon over here...which is more akin to a Canadian bacon than anything a Brit would recognise as bacon. Whats more, most of this Canadian style bacon you find in France is processed, full of water, limp and extremely bland!

The second shopping option is easy to find and for some an acceptable alternative to bacon. Look out for "Poitrine Salé", "Lard Paysan" or "Poitrine Fumé" (smoked version), in the butchers or supermarket. This is easy to spot becauses it resembles a slab of streaky bacon. Looks promising you might think!! Unfortunately, these products are usually far more heavily salted than bacons are. They might be very good for adding to stews etc, but are not a great candidate for a breakfast rasher for the ol frying pan!

If you like your rashers salty, by all means try it for yourself, some are not too bad. Just be sure to get the butcher to slice it extra thin.....if you ask for a kilo sliced, you will most likely get it in  5 to 10mm strips rather than rashers, if you don't specify.

The really good news is that you can actually make your own REAL bacon at home, cheaply and very easily! You really don't need specialised equipment  (like you do for sausagemaking for example), although odd bits n pieces can be handy or add to the quality of the product.

An easy way to start, is to look out for the pork promotions over the winter in your local supermarkets. Each one does the promo at a different time, so you should not have a lot of problem finding one on...just watch "la pub". Whole bellies are the cheapest way to try your hand at bacon making. A whole belly "en promo" will probably weigh 5 or 6 kilos and cost between 1.40 and 1.80 € the kilo. They also usually have whole loins "longe" available for around 2€ the kilo, if you fancy your hand at a bit of back bacon.

Obviously this is going to be factory farmed and low quality supermarket pork, but its ideal for a trial run....if everything goes horribly wrong you are only out 10€. If it works out to your satisfaction....which I am confident it will.....you can always buy some really good quality free range pork for making truly great bacon in later batches. If you are really lucky, you may even be able to find traditional rare breed pigs available in your area.

Not only is bacon making economic and very simple to do, but there are also a number of different ways you can tailor it to your own taste! So why not give it a go...I am sure you will not regret it!

Back soon with the first of the bacon recipes!

Guy