Ingredients
- Mix the following together in a small bowl:
- Order five pounds of fresh pork belly from your grocery store, the pork guy at your farmers market, or from a local butcher shop.
- Buy a box of 2-gallon zip-top bags if you don’t have a container big enough to hold the belly.
- 2 ounces (1/4 cup Morton or Diamond Crystal coarse kosher) salt
- 2 teaspoons pink curing salt #1 (I use this DQ Cure from Butcher-Packer, $2)
- 4 tablespoons coarsely ground black pepper
- 4 bay leaves, crumbled
- 1 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
- 1/4 cup brown sugar or honey or maple syrup
- 5 cloves of garlic, smashed with the flat side of a chef’s knife
- 2 tablespoons juniper berries, lightly crushed (optional)
- 5 to 10 sprigs fresh thyme (optional)
Preparation
Step 1
—Put your belly in the zip-top bag or on a sheet tray or in a plastic container. Rub the salt and spice mixture all over the belly. Close the bag or cover it with plastic wrap, and stick it in the refrigerator for seven days (get your hands in there and give the spices another good rubbing around midway through).
—After seven days, take it out of the fridge, rinse off all the seasonings under cold water and pat it dry.
—Put it on a sheet tray and put it in the oven (put it on a rack on a sheet tray if you have one) and turn the oven on to 200 degrees F. (if you want to preheat the oven, that’s fine, too). Leave it in the oven for 90 minutes (or, if you want to measure the internal temperature, until it reaches 150 degrees F.).
—Let it cool and refrigerate it until you’re ready to cook it. But I know. You won’t be able to wait. So cut off a piece and cook it. Taste it, savor it. Congratulations! It’s bacon!
Notes: If you don’t have five pounds of belly, either guesstimate salt based on the above or, if you have a scale, multiply the weight of the belly in ounces or grams by .025 and that’s how many ounces or grams of salt you should use.
If for any reason you find your bacon to be too salty to eat (it happens, especially if you measure your salt by sight, which I sometimes do), simply blanch the bacon and dump the water before sautéing it.
Pink curing salt means “sodium nitrite,” not Himalayan pink salt. It’s what’s responsible for the bright color and piquant bacony flavor. You don’t have to use it, but your bacon will turn brown/gray when cooked (you’re cooking it well done, after all), and will taste like pleasantly seasoned spare ribs, porky rather than bacony.