How to Cure Your Own Bacon at Home

Making your own bacon sounds like a project for someone with a smokehouse and a beard that reaches their chest, but it is genuinely one of the easiest cured meat projects you can take on. The process takes about a week, most of which is waiting, and the result is bacon that makes the pre-sliced supermarket stuff taste like a sad imitation of itself.

Start with a five-pound slab of pork belly, skin-on or skin-off, from your butcher. You want it fresh, not frozen. The cure is a simple mix of kosher salt, sugar, and pink curing salt, also called Prague Powder No. 1. The pink salt contains sodium nitrite, which prevents botulism and gives bacon its characteristic color and flavor. Use it precisely as directed. It is not optional and not interchangeable with regular salt.

The ratio is one tablespoon of kosher salt, one teaspoon of pink curing salt, and two tablespoons of brown sugar per pound of meat. Mix it together, rub it all over the pork belly, and place it in a zip-lock bag or vacuum-sealed bag. Refrigerate for seven days, flipping daily. The belly will firm up and darken as the cure penetrates. Liquid will accumulate in the bag. This is normal.

After seven days, rinse the belly thoroughly under cold water and pat it dry. At this point, you technically have bacon. You can slice and fry it as is for an unsmoked version. But smoking is where magic happens. A couple hours in a smoker at 200 degrees with applewood or hickory until the internal temperature reaches 150 degrees transforms your cured belly into something transcendent.

Slice the finished bacon on a meat slicer or by hand with a sharp knife. It will be thicker and more irregular than commercial bacon, and that is a feature. Store it wrapped tightly in the fridge for up to two weeks or freeze individual portions for months. Once you have tasted bacon you made yourself, the plastic-wrapped stuff at the grocery store stops looking like food.

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