Making Bacon

Well. Last week I was minding my own business when Elle changed my life. She posted about making home-cured bacon. The recipe she posted from Saveur was very easy and I actually had all the ingredients in the house. So it was the work of a moment to stick a bit of pork belly into the cure and stick it in the fridge. The piece of pork belly I had was even exactly the right weight! The only variation I made to the recipe was to use fennel pollen instead of fennel seed and caraway seed.

So - a week on and today I got to finish the recipe off. Definitely worthwhile! When I fried some it gave off a huge amount of lard, but it was delicious. Sweet, just the right amount of saltiness and with a really rich, bacony flavour. And frankly, I'd much rather my bacon gave off lard than grey water like so much supermarket bacon does. It wasn't as pink as store-bought, because I didn't add any saltpetre or nitrite or whatever it is, but it still cooked to a very appetising colour.

I now have a bag of bacon bones and rind to add to my next lentil soup, and 2 breakfasts-worth of lovely thick bacon rashers. And it gives me a nice warm glow to be all pioneer-y.