Bacon update

Well bacon is now a part of my diet but it's home made as you may remember from an earlier post. The belly that i used to try to make bacon was as good as it looked. I now have made my second piece of bacon but as you can see i have used the loin for this piece of bacon and i probably stay with this as there is no fat as you can see. This time this bacon was left a little longer before is was cleaned of salt and dried. As you can see it is a nice pink colour and ready to cook but i will have to wait till morning and have it for my breakfast. The one thing i don't use is the Pink Salt or it's other name is Sodium Nitrite all this does is make the bacon pink. Ok i know it looks pink now but when you cook it it cooks the same colour as normal pork but it retains the taste and flavour of normal bacon.

I used a recipe from an article about Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall making bacon. Well this guy knows what he is doing so i followed his direction. Hugh says  " Incidentally, my bacon doesn't require sodium nitrate (aka saltpetre); salt alone will do the job. The resulting bacon will lose its pinkness when cooked (saltpetre preserves colour, salt does not), but the taste will be better. "

Next time i will make the next bacon with Juniper berries that have just arrived tonight all the way from the isle of Orkney from my friend Richard.

I will be back in a day or two with how it tastes after i have it for breakfast. Mmm



How you make it

150g   Salt
50g     Dark brown sugar " don't know why "
5g       Black pepper


An optional extra that you can put in are the things i have listed below.


A few bayleaves finely chopped
20  Juniper berries, lightly crushed
25g Coriander seeds, crushed