The Ultimate Cured Bacon Recipe

By Simon Majumdar 

March 29, 2011

It's said that more than any other scent, the smell of frying bacon brings vegetarians back into the folds of the carnivorous. You can’t really blame them. When I was a teenager, only the smell of smoked back bacon would raise me from my slumbers on a Sunday morning and force me down to the kitchen table for a huge breakfast of golden-yolked eggs, toast and, of course, thick slices of the beautiful pink, cured pork.

The term “bacon” literally refers to cured meat taken “from a pig’s back,” although now bacon can come from many different parts of the animal. Curing in salt was a natural form of preservative and meant that the meat from slaughtered pigs could be kept well into the depths of winter, where it could be added to nutritious stews to fuel workers for their hard day’s labor.

So prized was bacon in medieval times, that in the 12th century, a priest from the town of Dunmow in the UK county of Essex awarded a side, or a "flitch,” of bacon to a couple who had impressed him with their piety and marital devotion to each other. The tradition continued and still does to this day and is the origin of the well-known phrase “Bringing home the bacon.”

In just about every nation where pork is a major source of protein, you will find some form of bacon or cured meats. Italian pancetta is one of the most famous and is a prerequisite ingredient in one of the most famous pasta dishes of all, the carbonara. In the UK, you can still find large joints of cured pork called gammon, which is soaked overnight to remove the salt from the meat and then simmered in water and spices for a long period before being glazed with honey in the oven.

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