My first attempt at curing my own bacon turned into a salt lick disaster

I tried curing a 5 pound pork belly using a recipe from some random blog (big mistake) and ended up with bacon so salty you could barely chew it. I followed the cure time exactly, 7 days in the fridge, but I think my salt ratio was way off compared to what they suggested. After smoking it for 4 hours with applewood, I sliced it up and my whole kitchen crew spit it out during service. Did I just need to soak it in water before smoking to pull out extra salt? Has anyone else ruined a batch like this and figured out a fix for next time?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_phoenix20d agoMost Upvoted

Oh man, that's a rough first attempt. I've done the same thing with a batch of pastrami where I oversalted the brine and ended up with something that could've been used to de-ice a sidewalk. A good soak in fresh water for a few hours before smoking can definitely help pull out some of that extra salt, but you gotta taste test a little piece raw first to see where you're at.

andrew91619d ago

Whoa, honestly that sounds like a brutal first attempt but hey we all learn the hard way. Ngl, @the_phoenix is right about the soak helping but I gotta push back on one thing - you don't want to taste raw pork belly before smoking, that's how you get sick. The real fix is weighing your salt next time instead of using volume measures. A good rule is 2.5% salt by weight of the meat, not counting sugar or curing salt. For a 5 pound belly that's about 2 ounces of salt total, which is way less than most blog recipes call for. Next time calculate it out and you won't need the soak, your bacon will come out perfect.