• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 450 0

comes from the belly of the hog, is good fried in strips and served with eggs, but, more broadly speaking, it’s one of the great flavors available to a cook, and depending on how the bacon itself is prepared, it can be a versatile ingredient in many dishes. Because in this country, even at meat counters, bacon is almost always sold in strips, we are less likely to take advantage of its versatility. When you make your own, however, you can cut strips 1⁄2 inch/1 centimeter wide and then cut those into the perfect batons called lardons, 1⁄2 inch/1 centimeter by 1⁄2 inch/1 centimeter by 11⁄2 inches/3.5 centimeters—the size you need in order to cook them so they’re crispy on the outside with a chewy interior. Then you can make a real coq au vin or a traditional frisée salad with a poached egg and lardons. Bigger chunks can be cut for stews, soups, and bean dishes. Slabs can be brushed with mustard and honey and roasted whole. Fresh bacon gently grilled is an extraordinary treat.

Happily, bacon is very easy to make at home. In this country, bacon is by definition smoked after it’s cured, but the smoke is really a secondary flavor, like a seasoning. The genuine bacon flavor comes partly from the sodium nitrite in the cure. If you have a smoker, or if you can create some low-heat smoke in a kettle barbecue, that will deepen the traditional bacon flavor, but no special equipment is necessary to cure your own bacon at home.

Furthermore, what you make at home will be superior to just about anything you can buy at supermarkets. Most of the bacon there comes from factory-raised hogs, the curing done at commercial plants, and the result is thin strips of watery meat that, even when cooked until crisp, have a taste only reminiscent of real bacon.

When you make your own bacon and fry a slice, you’ll know what bacon is all about. Notice the copious amount of fat that renders out, and that the meat doesn’t reduce in size by fifty percent. The result can give you an understanding of why bacon became such a powerful part of America’s culinary culture. The chefs and butchers who cure it as a part of their work may be able to ensure that we don’t lose it, but the tradition could be reinvigorated if more home cooks cured their own bacon, and then roasted slabs of it, slicing large chunks to serve as a garnish for a roasted loin, say, or confited it, or cut big lardons for salads. Or just served proper bacon for breakfast.

Slicing home-cured bacon as thin as supermarket bacon can be difficult, but home-cured bacon ought to be dense and chewy, so don’t worry too much about thinness (it helps to use a slicing knife—which has a long, thin blade—or to freeze the bacon before slicing). Leftover trimmings are fantastic in stews and sauces. Because of its high fat content, bacon keeps well frozen, making it easy to always have some on hand to throw into the pot or sauté pan.

FRESH BACON

Pork belly and pink salt are the two special items you need to make bacon, everything else is usually on hand. Some specialty markets may sell pork belly regularly—and in that case, you can specify exactly how much you want, say 3 to 5 pounds/1.5 to 2.25 kilograms—but in most parts of the country, you will have to order it through the meat department, which is easy enough to do. Excellent pork belly can also be ordered online. Either way, you’ll most likely receive a slab of between 5 and 10 pounds/2.25 and 4.5 kilograms. The pink salt, which is inexpensive and lasts a long time, must be mail-ordered (see Sources, page 301).

Fresh bacon is the simplest and purest kind of bacon to make, with a very mild flavor. Coat the slab of belly with the Basic Dry Cure, refrigerate it for about seven days or so, depending on its thickness, then rinse and pat dry. That’s it—you’re good to go. You can slice and cook it as is, sautéing it very slowly, and it’s delicious.

Traditionally, however, once it is cured, bacon is hot-smoked to a temperature of 150 degrees F./65 degrees C., then cooled and sliced. Because most people don’t own smokers, we suggest roasting the cured bacon