Home cured bacon, stage two, the finishing off and tasting of

The final stage of my home cured bacon, 

rinsing, drying and finishing off

My salty, homemade streaky bacon, delicious!

Following on from the first stage of home cured bacon in this post I now needed to complete the process.  My bacon was at its thickest part measured one and a half inches, apologies for all those who are metric, that's 13mm per half inch.  I allowed one day per half inch (13mm) and two days over.  I went two days over that for good luck, you cannot over cure, you can under cure though.

Whilst curing in the fridge I turned the belly pork over and redistributed the liquid in the bag to help the brining process.  

Today was day seven of the curing process, time to finish it off.  I removed the belly pork from the bag and rinsed under a slow flowing tap, don't have the water gushing or it'll spray raw pork juice all around your kitchen.  There wasn't much liquid in my bag so a thorough wash didn't take too long.  You might notice that the bacon feels firmer to the touch than it did prior to curing, this is perfectly normal.  Your bacon shouldn't smell of anything other than rather sweet or of the cure ingredients you used if you added any flavourings.

Any nasty pongs or niffs will indicate something is amiss, it could be a bacterial issue or that the cure hasn't taken or that the storage was too warm/cold.  My bacon had a slight loss of pigment in one place, this was possibly caused by too strong light in storage, my fridge is a busy place and the light is on off with the door opening and closing.  I also recall taking the bag out of the fridge and giving the bacon a good massage half way through the week to help the brining process which I carried out on a sunny kitchen counter.  It is worthy of note that Botulism has no odour and although rare I still favour a pre prepared professional nitrate/nitrite cure to rule out any risk.  See here for further information on possible causes of spoilage during the curing process.

Finished curing and ready to finish off

The next stage is to give it a proper drying off with kitchen paper.  At this stage you have two options:

1. You can hang it in your fridge to air dry for 24-48 hours or even longer depending on size.
2. You can pop it into a low oven (90C/200F) for up to two hours or until the internal temperature reaches 65C/150F - I check every hour as ovens vary as does each piece of meat.

I chose the second option, partly due to impatience and partly due to limited refrigerator space.  I placed the bacon skin side down on a rack and sat that on top of a baking tray to allow the warm oven air to circulate all around it.

Please note that if you chose to heat in the oven you must use an accurate thermometer.

Just 4 degrees C to go!

Once an internal temperature of 65C/150F has been reached you can remove your bacon from the oven and let it cool a little.  Once at a handleable temperature cut off the rind, you can use this to make pork scratchings, yum!

This is a very important step, please pay close attention.  Prior to storing your bacon take a sharp knife and carefully cut one slice off, fry it until crisped to your liking and taste it.  There you go, you've made bacon!  Now you can slice the rest and store in the fridge or freeze it.

Here's my first slices from this joint frying, I wish you could taste it!

I have two more YS belly pork joints in the freezer so I'm going to get the next batch going soon, I may do juniper and maple syrup with thyme as I just happen to have those things to hand and fancy a sweet cure next time.