To make your own smoked streaky bacon

Part One. The approach of winter, a grand country house and the wool from a sheep.

Winter approaches here at a pace.

I placed the mouse guards on the front of the beehives in the last few days. Long strips of steel, cast with holes that let the bees come and go through the entrance block to the hive. Nothing else can get inside now. Any invaders that might feel inclined to set up home for the winter months in a dark corner of the brood box are now excluded. The hives are now ready for the cold months ahead. The bees have an abundance of stored honey to see them through the deep frosts that lay ahead, though I shall place a block of fondant into each hive soon, to keep them topped up.

They will like that.

There were still drones on the frames when I inspected last time, the queen still laying eggs that will emerge as brood to see her through until spring. The young bees that will soon leave their wax cells to keep her warm, feed her and groom her until the spring sun warms the cedar walls of the hives again. The last of the bright yellow dogwood pollen, still being brought home on the corbiculae of the ever-busy workers.

Some beekeepers pack wool into the roof of the hives over winter.

Insulation you see.

The old dairy

I have two large sackfuls of natural wool stored in the old dairy. The fleece from a couple of rams that were shorn earlier this year. For now, it can stay there, under the high beamed rafters of what remains of the grand old house, a small brick room where milk and cream were stored long ago. Old brick walls with a lofty roof space that allowed cool air to be drawn in, acting as a natural refrigerator. Still a place for storage, but nowadays a place for beekeeping equipment and hundreds of bottles of apple juice, pressed from the orchard last year. Bottles of blushed pink juice pressed from the carmine fruit of the Winter Gem trees, Egremont Russet with its rich bronze extract, soft discs of pectin-rich pulp that have formed and sit in the shoulders of the glass bottles, where they’ve laid quietly for a year behind the exquisite, hand-wrought, rusted iron covered oak door that guards the quiet inside.

Hand wrought iron

There would have been a vast kitchen to feed the huge old house that once stood here, now long destroyed by fire. The footprint of the house still shows itself in the hot dry weather of summer on the formal lawns stretching out within the old walls that still remain. There would have been cooks here much like myself, busy with the seasons. Old maps of the estate show an enormous walled kitchen garden and also, what was most likely the height of fashion at the time, a tea garden.

Imagine.

I like to think of what they might have grown. The hard work that went into feeding the people that lived and worked here. How they managed their produce throughout the year, working only with the seasons, picking, preserving, salting and smoking. Putting away what was abundant now for later.

A belief in the values of traditional skills, ones that are timeless and that I still like to use. I’d like to think that the cook would approve of my work.

Today I thought I’d intentionally alienate a reasonable chunk of my vegetarian and plant-based readership. Not through malice you must understand, for that is not my intention. It is simply because I want to share a technique with you.

Old skills.

How to make bacon.

For curing

If you’ve never been minded to cure and smoke a chunk of pork belly before, then this is the opportunity to do so. You will not regret it. In fact, you’ll thank me for showing you the skills to create something that is so utterly delicious. This will likely be the first in a series of pieces on how to cure and preserve meat. I’d like to share with you techniques on how to cure ham, pancetta and bresaola. Not all at once, for that would be too much work for you. We’ll start simply with streaky bacon and work from there.

It will take a little time, but there is nothing to fear.

This will be another two-part newsletter; in the same style as the recipe for pheasant consommé was a couple of weeks ago.

We shall start today with Part One, where we shall cure the pork, and then in a week’s time Part Two, (as this is the time it will take to cure) where we shall take the sweet-cured piece of pork from its brine and hot-smoke it.

Then we shall have bacon.

Dark and sweet from its cure of muscovado sugar, salt and aromatics, oily from the hot woodsmoke. To be diced into lardons, or sliced thickly for frying, the rind kept for sauce-making. All of the best sauces are started with bacon fat.

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Sweet cured streaky bacon

The first thing to do is to visit the butcher.

Buy yourself a chunk of pork belly, around one kilo in weight. If the skin is still attached then this is fine as the smoked rind of bacon is an essential part of any decent kitchen to begin the steps required for good saucemaking. It is irreplaceable as a vehicle of flavour.

In addition to the pork, go to a good store or search the cupboards and find yourself dark muscovado sugar, flaked sea salt, black pepper, juniper berries, paprika and bay leaves.

Go online and order a packet of ‘Prague powder number 1’. This is a pink-curing nitrite salt, sometimes known as ‘Instacure 1’. It is very important, do not leave it out.

It is not the same as pink Himalayan salt so please don’t use that.

There is also Prague salt number 2. This is not the same. It is for something different that we shall tackle in the future. Know at least that it exists, as I shall come to it again one day, but for now, a small packet of Number 1 will be just right for what we need to do.

Take the pork belly and place it on a wooden board then dry it well with kitchen paper. With a sharp knife, score the skin a couple of times. If you wish to remove the skin, this is fine, but you won’t have any to use for interesting things that I’ll share with you over the winter.

Weigh the following into a bowl:

70 g of sea salt flakes

140 g of muscovado sugar

15 g of milled black pepper

7 g of paprika

7 juniper berries, lightly crushed

3 bay leaves

3 g Prague Powder No 1

Next

Now mix all of the dry ingredients together, breaking and crushing the bay leaves, then take the chunk of pork and in a large bowl rub all of the mixture into both sides of the meat. Rub it in well then place it in either a vacuum bag or a zip food bag and seal it tightly.

Dry rubbed

As the ingredients dissolve with the juices from the pork, they will form a sticky dark brine in the bag. This is correct. Place the bag on a tray and put it in the fridge. Every day, turn the bag over, massaging the mixture into the pork thoroughly.

Sealed

This should be done for between five to seven days. I like to check mine after five days, just out of habit more than anything. I’ll examine the meat and see if I feel it needs another day or so to firm up.

If I were you, and if it’s the first time you’ve done this, then leave it for seven days.

After the days have passed, we must rinse the curing mixture away under running water, then dry the pork with paper. It must then go back to the fridge uncovered for at least twenty-four hours. This ensures that the meat is nicely dried, and a pellicle will have started to form. Then we can think about Part Two, hot-smoking.

And that will be this time next week.

Over the coming days, find a good outdoor shop or perhaps the butcher and buy some wood chips for smoking. Applewood would be very good for this.

And so in the meantime, I leave you to the task ahead and wish you an enjoyable week of massaging bacon.

Until then,

WIlliam