Natural Sugar Cured Bacon without Nitrates

  • After reading Chris's sugar cured ham recipe, I've had a go at it using a small piece of pork belly and a couple of pork fillets. Been in the sugar for 2 days now and look like they're drying out. Next step is to brine them.

    Cheers, Wayne

    After a day in the Raw Sugar. Can't believe how much moisture it's drawn out.

    Gone a very dark red



    Well here's the results......


    After 3 days in the sugar

    3 more days in UG's brine mix and a few hours drying in the fridge

    Into the Hark at 70-75 degrees C for 4 hours. Then ramped the temp up to 120C for another hour and internal temp was 71C

    The Pork Fillets

    The Pork Belly

    Ready to carve

    Slicing the Belly, didn't come out to bad I thought?

    The pork fillets were different. A distinct ring of nice pink meat and a "normal" centre. Fairtly artistic but not what I was after. I noticed as I was injecting the fillets that the brine just seemed to run out. Maybe too soft a cut or more days in the brine?

    The proof of the pudding or bacon in this case is in the eating

    The fillet was a bit bland, no fat perhaps? The belly was pretty good. A nice sweet tase and probably as close as I'll get to "real" bacon. Jan for once actually put salt on it and declared it a winner!

    Going to try it again soon with a better piece of belly and see how it comes up.


    Cheers, Wayne and Jan

    BBQ Junkster

    I just did a weeks worth of cardio after walking into a spiderweb

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