Not exactly the healthiest recipe to share, and in no way can we say that homemade bacon is nutritionally better than store-bought bacon. But if you want to indulge from time to time, and are down to experiment in the kitchen, this is the recipe for you!

Perhaps a small win is that you know what you’re putting into your bacon, something you may never know when ordering from the deli counter. If you pick up pre-packed streaky bacon, you’ll see some ingredients that you won’t have to use in your kitchen at home too.

Prep time: 15 minutes

Cure time: 10 days in the fridge

Ingredients

• 1kg pork belly, skin off

• Curing salt - link to what we used

• Salt

• Honey

• Black pepper

• Dried chilli flakes

Notes

1. You can use pork belly with skin on and use the recipe exactly the same, but our preference is skin off

2. Feel free to use any weight of pork belly, the amount of salt & curing salt used will be determined by an online calculator

3. Curing salt is absolutely essential. It prevents bacteria growth and enhances flavour and colour of the meat. It’s a preservative too, but of course, the amount used HAS to be very calculated

4. You can use sugar instead of honey, but we enjoy the taste of honey more

5. For honey, black pepper and dried chilli flakes, we used as much as we like. You can totally add other seasonings like maple syrup, sriracha, chilli powder and more.

Method

• Dry the slab of pork belly thoroughly

• Calculate the amount of curing salt and salt needed for your slab of pork belly. Since we used 1kg, we used 2.5g of curing salt and 25g of salt.

• Slab on honey

• Rub the curing salt, salt, black pepper and dried chilli flakes evenly all over the surface of the pork belly

• Seal well in a ziploc bag and stick it in the fridge for 10 days. Do make sure there is no air in the ziploc bag once it’s sealed.

• At the halfway mark (Day 5), flip the slab of pork belly over to the other side

• After 10 days, wipe off the extra seasonings on the bacon

• Then your bacon is ready to be sliced for cooking and consumption, or you can add extra flavours by smoking it!

Notes

1. You can cure for minimally 7 days, but we found 10 days to be the sweet spot for our 1kg meat.

2. The longer the cure, the saltier the end product.

3. It is a must to lay the pork belly flat in the fridge while curing

4. We recommend to place the ziploc bag containing the meat on a tray as well, just in case it starts to leak. It didn’t happen for us, but it’s good to take extra precautions!

5. Over the course of 7-10 days, check that the ziploc bag does not start to bloat, or the meat does not start to discolour or grow any funky business. If this happens, we won’t recommend to consume the meat, but it’s your call!

6. Also check that the pork belly becomes firmer by the days. The end result of curing pork belly to be bacon will feel firm to touch.

Other than smoking homemade bacon, this smoking machine can be used to smoke anything! We’ve used it on steaks and prawns, but the potential is endless:)