Curing bacon: Day 1

My father worked as a butcher when he was younger, and over the years he kept preparing meat for himself. I remember going to my grandfather's and making mince meat by putting lumps of meat through a mincer. Making sausages in my grandfather's garage, stuffing sausage mix into casings and smoking them. Smoking salmon in a home-made smoker. All very useful things to be able to do for yourself.

So, since he has a leg of pork and I was helping make it into bacon, this time I decided to photograph the process so I can better remember how to do it.

The first step is to create a 55% ratio salt to sugar mix for rubbing into the leg of pork.



Ensure the salt and sugar combination is thoroughly mixed.



Cut the leg of pork open. In this case, the pork is thin enough that the cure should penetrate it, so stuff doesn't need to be injected into it as it would otherwise.



Sprinkle some salt in the curing container.



Rub the mix into the first side of the pork. Ensure the mix is rubbed thoroughly into all the nooks and crannies.



Flip the pork over and rub the mix into the other side.



Throw the pork into the curing container.



Sprinkle some more mix over the top.



Throw the curing container into the fridge.



Leave it until tomorrow when the next steps occur. Something about how saltpeter is now illegal and they have better things to use these days. Also it needs to be turned each day.

Next post: Curing bacon: Day 2