On Curing Bacon

For properly cured bacon, you need pink curing salt, which is a mixture of salt and sodium nitrite. Nitrites and nitrates are naturally occurring chemical compounds abundant in the soil (and therefore in the plants we eat) and in our body. Once thought to be bad for us, recent evidence suggests that they improve vascular health (many people are prescribed nitrates for heart issues). So, don’t think of them as chemical additives. For more information on pink salt, see the recipe for Corned Beef.

Bacon is, by definition, pork belly that has been cured with pink salt and hot-smoked until it’s fully cooked. But it doesn’t need to be smoked. You can simply cook it in a low oven until it reaches an interior temperature of 150°F/65°C. You don’t even need to cure it with pink salt—you can just salt it (see Ventrèche). It will taste much porkier and won’t be pink like cured bacon, but it will still be delicious. But if you have a charcoal grill or a smoker, it’s seriously worth the effort of putting some smoke on that slab.