Traditional Bacon Curing: No Nitrates - Just Salt

I made this but mixed brown sugar with the salt. Absolutely fantastic results! Commercial bacon gives me a terrible headache, so this is life-changing for me! Today I ate bacon for the first time in a year. Thank you!

We're all different and hopefully open to new things and methods. My dad was a butcher and most of the rest of our family are farmers so I was raised with the absolute best meat in the world and curing was one of my dad's specialties. He salted pork belly just like this but that was for mom, she used that in her beans and black eyed peas. he used different recipes for bacon and ham but they'd always be 50/50 salt and sugar to start and then he'd add real maple syrup or molasses or some other flavor that somebody requested. Sadly, Pop died in 1972 when I was just 19 and I didn't get a chance to learn the trade from him. Although, I did learn to sharpen a knife and I'm more than a little anal about it. And I do cure my own bacon and ham and use the same 50/50 with a little maple added that I learned from him. I also smoke it and I've built many smokers over the years since I'm a welder. But man, you can easily build a smoker for cured meat out of a few sheets of plywood just tacked together. Get a metal bucket and get some coals going in it and put it in the lean to with your cured meat hung up. You're not trying to cook it, you're just smoking it to add the flavor and it's well worth adding in my opinion! You don't want a heavy smoke because that'll taste bitter, just a light smoke for a few hours can make a huge difference. Anyway, thanks for the video! I enjoyed it.

For all of you decrying this young man as "hipster", pay attention. I work with, train and try to instill a work ethic into young men of today, to minimal degrees of success. Be very happy someone his age is doing this. Very very happy. There is a load of "dead from the ears up" folks that are doing good to microwave bacon or buy it pre-cooked, much less cure it.

Thank you for learning a life preserving skill and passing it on to the next generation,good man.

Thank you for this method with only salt, no sugar or spice! I actually came looking for a way to make real old-fashioned "Dry Salt" pork, as we used to call it. The "salt pork" in the stores now is not the same as we used to have and has hardly any salt in it, which changes the flavor. The old kind, my grandparents would slice in a skillet, and cover with water and bring to a boil to remove some of the salt, then drain and fry it slowly until it was very very crisp. A little went a long way. So delicious, and the rind was like jerky :-) Tina

Thanks for the simple recipe, and the update below. I have been making Italian cured meats (like pancetta) for some time now. This is dead easy! And who doesn't love bacon, in whatever form it takes?

Great video. A suggestion: When you cook your bacon, put it on a rack (like a cooling rack) then put it in the pan. The bacon cooks and the fat drips away from the bacon. It's less greasy and the rendered fat is cleaner, in case you save it to cook with it.

Salt and grease are my favorites. Thanks for doing it naturally.

More salt to start. You don't ever want the standing liquid under or on the pork because it actually starts to absorb back into the meat. More salt equals less salty flavor at the end. Thanks for you video!

You've convinced me to make my own (healthy) bacon. This is exciting!

Thank you so much for this. My family has a lot of chemical sensitivities and for some reason smoked meat, even uncured, make us very, very ill. I'm so glad to know there is an alternative to the expensive uncured, unsmoked bacon we've been buying.

TYSVM for posting this video and the update! I have been looking for such a video to make my own bacon and am extremely happy to have found yours.

I can hear the angels sigh as the bacon is being cooked. Thank you!

I salt the meat once, (only salt), then leave it in the fridge for a week, then after I wash the excess salt off I soak it in a container of fresh water for an hour or 2 ( gets any excess salt out) then back into the fridge to dry properly.

Thank you for sharing this method. Was planning on saving a chunk for braised pork belly so I'll check out your roast video.

This is the first correct old style way to cure bacon video that I have seen yet. The purpose of salt is to draw out the liquid and infuse the salt in to keep bacteria cfrom spoiling. Then smoke. When you are ready to use the bacon, soak it maybe two times to take out the salt. Enjoy.

Thank you. It is very clear and explained so everyone can understand.

Look up "cold smoke mazes" on Amazon. They're very low temp smoking options and you can even use a cardboard box as a smoke chamber. I'm building my own chamber out of reclaimed wood but it's a good option that doesn't require an entire hot smoker setup.

Good for you! It seems like, making this video was some thing that was not easy for you to do. Thank you for sharing your knowledge in this well presented video with us. Take care, Merry Christmas.

I had no idea it was so simple. Thanks for the video and keep it up!