Congratulations, you’ve made bacon!

Your bacon has been curing for five days now, and is ready to rest before eating.  [If you’re making back bacon, I’m afraid you’re not *quite* there yet, just repeat Day Four today and come back to this post tomorrow.]

Take your bacon out of the fridge, rinse it well under cold running water, dry it thoroughly with paper kitchen towel, and wrap it loosely in baking paper / parchment.  Ideally leave it in the fridge for at least 24 hours before you eat it – I know this sounds like the worst kind of torture, but there are a couple of good reasons to be patient.

Firstly it allows a layer called the ‘pellicle’ to form on the surface of the bacon, you’ll see this appear, it’s a glossy, slightly tacky surface layer which is especially important if you’re planning to smoke your bacon as it helps the smoke flavours to be absorbed into the bacon.  Resting the bacon also allows the cure to equilibrate evenly through the bacon, whereas you’re likely to find the outside saltier if you tuck in straight away.

I can’t wait to hear what you all think about the results of your efforts!  More on keeping, preparing and eating your bacon in the next post – along with some ideas on where to take your curing endeavours from here!

All the Big Bacon Challenge posts will be collected under the ‘BigBaconChallenge’ category heading – so go there to read them all!

Read more from the Country Skills blog >>

If you’re making streaky bacon from belly pork, this is the last time you need to drain the pickle from your bacon, and apply the rest of the cure – if you’re making back bacon from loin I’m afraid you have one more day of this to go.

Still, all of you are now tantalisingly close to the marvellous ‘eating the bacon’ stage of the experiment.  Your meat should be looking very much like bacon by now.  Hungry yet?

All the Big Bacon Challenge posts will be collected under the ‘BigBaconChallenge’ category heading – so go there to read them all!

Read more from the Country Skills blog >>

This is where it all starts to get a little bit repetitive.  Today – just like yesterday – take the bacon out of the fridge, pour off the pickle, re-apply the dry cure (another quarter or fifth depending on whether you’ve got belly or loin) turning the bacon the other way up, and put it back into the fridge.

There’s something special today, though – you should start to notice a change in the appearance and texture of your meat – already it’s less like pork and more like bacon, it may be visibly darker pink in colour than it was, and will certainly be starting to feel firmer, all of which is evidence that the cure is being absorbed, water is being removed, and the character of the meat is changing as a result – it’s the alchemy of curing, and it’s exciting to see each and every time.

All the Big Bacon Challenge posts will be collected under the ‘BigBaconChallenge’ category heading – so go there to read them all!

Read more from the Country Skills blog >>

What you do with your bacon today is the template for the next few days, really.

Get your container out of the fridge.  You’ll notice the liquid in the bottom – its  probably a brown colour from the sugar in your cure.  This is called the pickle and is completely normal – it’s made up of salt and sugar from the cure, and liquid being drawn out of the meat – but we want to get rid of it, or our dry cure will turn into a brine cure pretty quickly.  So hold onto your bacon securely while you pour the pickle away.  Don’t bother trying to dry the meat or the dish or anything like that, though.  You might also notice, like mine, that the skin of your bacon has gone a bit blotchy.  This is because of uneven distribution of the cure at this stage, and isn’t anything to worry about.

Now look at the dry cure you have left over and roughly divide it into four parts (or five, if you’re making back bacon).  Accuracy isn’t important here, just more-or-less.  Now rub your quarter (or fifth) of cure all over the bacon like you did yesterday, leaving the bacon the other way up in the dish – so if it was skin-up yesterday, skin-down today.

That’s it, about a minute’s work. Just replace your clingfilm and put the dish back in the fridge.

All the Big Bacon Challenge posts will be collected under the ‘BigBaconChallenge’ category heading – so go there to read them all!

Read more from the Country Skills blog >>

So, welcome all to the first post of the Big Bacon Challenge series – I’m so excited!   I put the curing salts in the first class post today to those of you who have asked for them, so I hope they should arrive with you in the next day or two.  In the mean time, there are a few things you can do do get ahead – and I’ve already had one request for starting instructions!

If you haven’t already found it, start looking for a piece of pork to cure.  Pork belly will make streaky bacon in five days, and a piece of pork loin will make back bacon in six.  I suggest looking for a piece about 500g in weight for your first attempt (and this will leave you enough left-over cure to make another piece afterwards, possibly with some different flavours in the mix!).

You’re looking for a nice quality piece of pork, ideally with the skin still on.  It’s not a problem if the skin has already been scored – as it often will be on a piece ‘intended’ for roasting – in fact I think it helps the cure penetrate more evenly.  In a perfect world it would be gorgeous free-range pork from your local farm shop or butcher, but even a bargain piece of belly from the ‘value’ meats section of the supermarket will produce better bacon than you can imagine, so don’t fret too much – it’s just an experiment, after all!  The important thing is that it should be nice and fresh, so buy it as close as possible to starting the curing process.

Now’s a good time to assemble all the extra bits, too.  You’ll be needing:

• A non-metallic dish for curing your bacon in.  I generally use a stoneware or pyrex oven dish, as this can be covered without the cling film coming into contact with the meat so the air can circulate.  Mind you, I’ve seen variations on dry curing that suggest packing all the cure and the meat in a plastic bag for a week, so I’m not sure the vessel makes all that much difference!
• Some nice dark sugar – between 20 and 40g depending on the weight of your pork, soft dark brown is ideal, or try muscovado or even molasses sugar for a really dark intense flavour hit.  
• Something airtight to hold your made up cure – I use a small recycled plastic tub with a snap-on lid, but a ziplock bag would also be fine. 
• Kitchen scales.
• Cling film.

If you’re getting so excited you just can’t wait, you can get going already following the older posts on making streaky bacon and back bacon.  Or, if you can bear to wait until tomorrow, we’ll start the series of day-by-day instructions, in much more detail!

I can’t wait to hear how all my volunteers are getting along, so please do comment as we go!

All the Big Bacon Challenge posts will be collected under the ‘BigBaconChallenge’ category heading – so go there to read them all!

Read more from the Country Skills blog >>