Bacon

Ingredients

• 1.5 kg pork belly, skin removed
• 50 g brown sugar
• 90 g honey
• 90 g maple syrup
• 70 g salt
• 2 g fresh ground pepper

Method

Curing:

1. Rinse the pork belly and pat dry
2. In a mixing bowl, mix your sugar, honey, and maple syrup. Once that’s blended, mix in your salt and pepper.
3. Place the pork in a large sealable bag and start rubbing in your mixture on the top, bottom, and sides of the belly. Once you’ve adequately rubbed the mix in, extract as much air as possible. Then place it on a tray and put that in the fridge.
4. The belly will need to cure for at least seven days. Every day take it out, rub it around, and flip it to keep the meat evenly coated.
5. After the seven days the skin should be firm. If it’s still too spongy, add a little more salt and return it to fridge for a day or two.
6. Once it’s fully cured, rinse the meat well and pat it completely dry.

Important safety note:

If it smells odd when you pull it out of the bag, discard it. Better to throw out a batch than get food poisoning.

Smoking:

1. Soak wood in water for 30 minutes
2. Pre-heat charcoal BBQ to 90º
3. Places the wood chips around the edges of the charcoal
4. Place the pork belly fat (or skin if you left it on) side down.
5. Keep the temperature between 90º and 120º
6. Smoke until an internal temperature of 65º is reached, between 2 and 4 hours.
7. Place in fridge overnight, then use as desired.

Preparation Notes

Many wood options work well, including:

• Apple
• Cherry
• Hickory

Spicing:

Adding flavours to your bacon is one of the biggest advantages of making it at home. Given that bacon costs about the same as a raw pork belly, it’s certainly not cheaper.

One of our favourites is to throw a handful of cardamom pods and star anise into a spice grinder and add that to the mixture.

Storage

• Storage: Refrigerator for up to 3 weeks
• Freezer: Yes