Home-Cured Pork Belly Recipe (2024)

FAQs

How long does pork belly take to cure? ›

Arrange a metal rack on a sheet pan with sides and place the meat on the rack, to allow airflow. Leave it in the refrigerator for a week. Turn it over daily and pour off any liquid. The tesa is ready when the salts have penetrated to the center, one to two weeks depending on how thick the belly is.

Here's a look at three easy ways to cook it: stovetop, grilling and oven roasted. It's a triple threat on the delicious front. Stovetop: Use 500 grams of pork belly, basically enough to cover the bottom of your pan in one layer.

The Curing Process. The old-fashioned way to cure meat simply involves completely covering the meat with salt for one to five days.

The brine can start to break down the meat, resulting in a texture that's overly-salty and mushy. It's not a pleasant experience. So if you do accidentally leave the pork chops brining for longer than recommended, you can try your luck and cook them anyway, but your results won't be as good as you'd hoped.

You should be fine, for bellies, I've always figured 3 days per inch of thickness plus one day for adequate curing (2 inch slab... 2 x 3 days + 1=7 days), as I said above, longer guarantees they're equalized well, but it's not an absolute necessity.

It is absolutely possible to cure bacon without nitrates; but be aware that the end product will be more the color of cooked pork and that the flavor will be akin to that of a pork roast. With or without the pink salt, homemade bacon is worth the effort.

1 pink salt is used to cure all meats that require cooking, brining, smoking, or canning. This includes poultry, fish, ham, bacon, luncheon meats, corned beef, pates, and other products. It is 93.75 percent table salt and 6.25 percent sodium nitrite. It is used at a rate of 1 teaspoon per 5 pounds of ground meat.

boiled water over the scored rind. This will slightly. open the rind up.

Pork belly can be cooked in many different ways, but here are a few methods to help make it tender: Slow Cooking: Slow cooking is one of the best methods to make pork belly tender. You can slow cook it in a slow cooker or oven at a low temperature for several hours until it's fully cooked and tender.

How do you cure pork at home? ›

Decide what cut of pork you'd like to cure and choose a dry rub or wet brine. Coat the pork in a dry rub containing curing salt and seasonings or submerge it in a salty seasoned brine. Leave the pork to cure for several days before finishing and heating the meat.

Curing Ingredients

You'll need salt, sugar, sodium nitrate, and sodium nitrite. Mix thoroughly. Use 1 ounce of mixture per pound of meat. Too much nitrate and nitrite can be toxic.

I found a recipe for "cured" meat that involves soaking the meat in a mixture of alcohol, sugar, soy sauce, salt, and spices for a few days in the fridge before hanging outside to dry for another week or so.

For dry-cured products, cure 7 days per inch of thickness. For example, if the thickest part of the ham measures 5 inches, then the ham will take 35 days to cure (7 days per inch × 5 inches = 35 days). The best temperature for curing meat is 32 to 40°F.

But don't think of the word "belly" as in stomach, rather it's the flesh that runs on the underside of the pig. Pork belly is uncured, un-smoked and un-sliced bacon. So bacon is mostly cured (you can buy uncured bacon), smoked and sliced. Typical American bacon is cured with salt and also smoked.

You can also vacuum seal the bag to remove all the air if you have this available. Place the bag in the refrigerator and allow it to cure. Allow the pork belly to cure for approximately 7 days. A general rule is to cure your bacon 7 days for every inch of thickness.

Cured bacon is pork belly preserved with salt and artificial chemical additives, particularly nitrates and nitrites, such as sodium nitrate and sodium nitrite. The curing process turns pork belly into bacon. Curing is a way to preserve meat, extend its shelf life, and prevent spoilage, bacterial growth, and botulism.