Making your own bacon

[KamadoSimon]

Hi Keith - nope removed the skin. Not a fan of rind-on bacon.

Simon

[keith157]

If you take the cured rind off the bacon and fry gently it to render the fat down you get lurverly crunchy salty carackling, as well as bacon fat to dip your bread into

[KamadoSimon]

I'm fat enough.

[keith157]

So do you think that's my problem?

[KamadoSimon]

[aris]

Take the skin off for sure. The cure does not penetrate the skin at he same rate as flesh which is more of a problem with a dry cure rather than a wet cure.

[keith157]

Cheers for that chaps, I'll remember that for sure.

[Jonty]

I make a fair bit of bacon and you can do it with the skin on, you just need to apply most of the cure to the flesh side and leave it for a couple of more days than the prescribed XX days to allow the cure to permeate from one side only. I must admit thouugh, as much as I love the crispy bacon crackling you get from the skin, if you don't have a slicer, it's too much of a pain to slice with a knife so I take the skin off.

[keith157]

Fair point jonty

[Jonty]

I've found that without a slicer, the best way to slice streaky bacon from a cured belly is by rolling it into a tube and wrapping it with cling flim then slicing.





It works pretty well, and as per all the previous posters, it's so easy to make and beats any of the shop bought stuff. You can knock up a really simple cure with some Sugar, salt and cure#1 then you can adjust the saltiness/sewwtness to suit your own pallate... If you've got the facility to cold smoke - even better !