Experiments in Charcuterie pt 1

I was listening to the food programme on radio 4 a week or so back when they did a review of home curing and smoking. Now like a lot of people I thought this was some mystical art done by specialists, however this is not the case, it is in fact very easy. In the last couple of years I have been making all our bread, we produce our own eggs (well the hens do!) I have even made my own butter (something else that's so simple) so now it's time to make bacon.

The ingredients are just equal quantities of soft brown sugar and sea salt (not table salt) I used about 300 g's of each and a piece of belly pork


Massage the pork in the mix, working it into folds in the meat.


Once the mix has been well worked in place the meat in a container or a sealed bag.


You then place the container in the fridge. This is our beer fridge in the bar/studio in the garden so it is out of the way of Sharron who is vegetarian and doesn't like the idea of seeing my experiment every time see gets the milk out!

You now leave the meat in the fridge for about a week, but you have to massage it every day. I will post the next stage next week.

The other thing I want to try is smoking meat/fish so over the next week or so I will put together what I need to do this and share it with you.