How to season fresh bacon ( so it tastes cured)
What is fresh bacon?
So when i say “fresh” bacon, i actually mean fresh pork belly that has been sliced and packaged, no smoking, no salting, no cure of any description. The way bacon used to be!
I was so excited to collect our “fresh bacon” from the butcher after a long anticipation of raising our own organic pork, non GMO, no hormones, pasture raised AND not just from any pig - we’ve been raising Mangalitsa pigs, so we are talking pork thats up there with wagu beef!
I cooked my first pound of rashers straight in the skillet and my excitement turned to horror as i watched my beloved meat turn brown like a steak and when i finally got them out of the pan - tasteless! I almost cried
What I didn’t know then
Where I had not connected the dots back then is that the meat i put in the skillet was not bacon! As i said earlier the meat i cooked was just fresh pork belly. It was all beautifully sliced and looking like bacon, but because it hadn’t yet been cured, you can’t really call it bacon!! Confused?… In short, bacon is only bacon after the curing process has occured.
What does curing do to the meat?
The purpose of curing is about preserving meat, extending shelf life, enhancing flavour and arresting bacterial growth. Meat has been cured with naturally occurring salt compounds for centuries. Today natural cures are still available as are synthetically produced cures. When meat is cured the salts used cause a chemical reaction within the meat that makes it stay beautifully pink when cooked and make the meat super flavourful.
What to do when you want to avoid cure altogether.
If you are here because you want to avoid nitrates in cured meats I have some good news for you, however I will also advocate that all cure is not bad -but that is a topic for another day. To jump straight to the point, you do not have to cure fresh bacon to eat it but you do need to cook it in a special way, or you will have the same experience that I mentioned earlier. After some trial and error and a lot of hunting around I finally landed on a recipe that you can use to cook fresh bacon so that it will look and taste like the bacon you are familiar with. Also just to point out the obvious that in this case your fresh pork should be kept frozen until you’re going to use it to avoid any bacterial growth occuring.
How to cook fresh bacon ( so it tastes cured)
After a little bit of experimenting and some trial and error, i finally nailed it. I know i nailed it because when i asked my daughter what she thought of “mom’s new bacon” she said “its the best bacon i’ve ever had” - and she’s my picky eater too!
Here is what to do -
Pre heat your oven to 400
Lay your bacon rashers on a baking sheet
Sprinkle each rasher generously with salt and paprika
Bake in the oven until it looks done ( depending on if you like your bacon chewy or crispy!) We cook ours around 10mins max.
Transfer rashers onto a plate with paper towel to absorb any excess fat
Serve and enjoy!
If you’re having a hard time finding fresh sliced pork belly, check out our farm store here!
