Pork

Here are a couple of videos on making your own bacon. We now have to let it sit in the fridge for a week so we'll follow up next weekend with another series of videos on what to do next. If you have a smoker of any sort, then making your own bacon is pretty easy. In fact, even if you do not you should be able to finish it up in your oven for unsmoked bacon - I'll try that once and make a video for it as well. This is the first time I'm making my bacon this way - usually I brine the belly for 2 or 3 days in my regular brining solution, and then smoke it. But I decided to give curing a try since I think it is a more correct way to do it, and I also decided to try using nitrites even though I am pretty sure you can cure without them. Nitrites work their way into the meat and then turn to a gas, and as the gas escapes it is noxious to microorganisms which kills them and gives you a higher degree of certainty that the meat is safe. I've never worried too much about that since bacon always gets cooked well anyway. I'll also try this again with just a salt cure and no nitrites.

The exact recipe I'm using is from monty on Ottawa Foodies. It looks like this for 5 lbs of belly.

• 1/4 cup non-iodized salt (pickling, kosher, sea)
• 2 tsp Insta-Cure® (6.25% sodium nitrite)
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 1/4 cup maple syrup