Makin Bacon Day 4

toquina: Just read back on some of your prior posts for this 'bacon'. You are strictly using salt & sugar? No pink salts or pre-mixed cures?

toquina: Nitrates do not add any food safety factor, such as allowing you to eat bacon right off the grill. They due however bring the curing process to a level that salt/sugar alone is not capable of. I am guessing you will be smoking the pork to about 140*? Or do you plan to cold smoke? Keep in mind, that once above 137* pork is safe to eat, but who would want to eat raw/uncrisp bacon? It is safe, but not what any of us are after when it comes to bacon. I am fully perplexed why they would instruct to to drain the liquid, as this actually becomes part of the brining process. I think you will find this is going to taste more like pork than the bacon flavor we all grew up with. FWIW, there are folks on this forum that have been curing bacon, whole hams, proscuitto of duck or pork...(I could go on and on) for many years! You might consider listening to the input you have been given. You can truly learn a lot here if you allow your walls to come down.

Well said.

Okay now that we have discovered you are not using nitrates, you are basically following a technique which can just be called salt curing. It's most likely one of the fastest methods because it uses a higher amount of salt which is really good for leeching out water from meat. In the old "curing for preservation" days kegs of salted meats had a drain hole which allowed for the liquid to leak out. It carried a lot of blood with it which was a good thing, as blood will foul a brine without refrigeration. Which was the reason folks preserved meat in salt in the first place, they didn't have a fridge. If tubs or zipper bags of salt cured meats are refrigerated, there is no need for draining. One thing you might notice with your bacon is that it may be darker than you expect, but this is natural with a salt cure. (nitrates are what makes bacon pink.... sort of like the difference between a pork roast and a ham.)

Modern dry curing methods which are really "flavor cures" use nitrates and have several advantages like food safety if you are smoking at low temps for longer than the 4 hour window...., the nice pink color we expect to see in cured foods..., a slight texture change... and flavor.

Home curing is a great hobby and usually the most important advice I give is to keep good notes so you can make accurate changes if needed. And to pay attention to details (amounts of cure, time, temperature etc.). You are already doing both of these things, so that is a plus. I hope you will give dry curing a try in the future. And it's not limited to bellies, you can also process boned butts, pork loins, or thick pork chops. Loins come out like Canadian bacon.