Enough about the bacon already!

Yep, it's time for me to rave on again about the joys of making your own bacon, particularly if you can get your hands on free-range rare breed pork belly. I picked up my 7kg or porky goodness from King Valley Free Range yesterday. Mmmmmmmm lovely. This is the best piece of belly I've had so far - this time it was from a pig that had been aged for bacon.

Assemble your ingredients........

Admire the belly. Mmmmmmm belly!

Slice the Belly into portion sizes, and prepare your dry cure. This time I'm making 2 sorts. A savoury bacon using Hugh Fearnly-Whittingstall's dry cure recipe, and a maple cured sweet bacon using a recipe from the book Charcuterie. The Dry cure mix is 1kg course salt, 200g brown sugar, 20 juniper berries crushed, 25g peppercorns crushed, 2-3 bay leaves crushed/chopped finely. Mix it all together with clean hands and you're ready to go

Then you need a non-reactive container (I use a plastic one). Rub all surfaces of each piece with the cure and stack. Every day for 5 days drain off any liquid and rub in more cure. Re-arrange the pieces so everyone gets a turn at the top/bottom. I go for the lighter cure as I freeze my bacon for later use.

The maple cure is a bit different - sugar (1/4 cup), salt (50g) and maple surup (1/4 cup). Mix together and then rub into belly pieces. Place in a zip-lock bag, seal and place this on a tray in the fridge. Each day turn the bag and 'massage' the cure into the pork (the cure and pork juices will form a liquid brine after a day or so. Do this for 7 days.

Stay tuned for the reveal in about a week!