Several ways exist to cure bacon, this one is the easiest for home producers and makes a fantastic bacon!
Awesome plastic bags shown, waay better than Ziplock, seals without leaks:
First Street Jumbo 2-Gallon... www.amazon.com/dp/B008M1H8HM
I am using the fat-cap from a pork shoulder or "pork butt", to get a piece of meat with close to the fat/meat ratio, and the hard fat, as pork belly. However, you can get pork shoulder for a quarter the price as belly! This is often called "buckboard bacon" as opposed to normal "belly" bacon.
The internet is filled with misinformation on curing meats and making bacon, but there is one source you can trust the numbers absolutely that I am using, and you should too!
There is one single undisputed final source for all government requirements and information on meat cures, nitrite and nitrate amounts, accelerator amounts, etc, and that is the USDA FSIS Processing Inspectors Calculation Handbook, here it is, download a copy to avoid all internet meat myths now:
www.fsis.usda.gov/policy/fsis...
We are making a brine/pickle/immersion-cured ham, page 19, and I am going to further limit myself and treat it like Bacon since I’m frying it, page 27.
And we are going to do some ppm nitrite calculations, of which two non-pumped methods, formula, and example is shown on page 22: Method One- Weight Pickup, fast; and Method Two- Equilibrium method, slower to allow actual Equilibrium to be reached. We’re gonna use Method Two, Equilibrium.
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Here are the numbers from this “Buckboard bacon”:
3200g meat start
1800g water, 1.8 Liters
= 5000g meat+water, to calculate next 3 items.
150g salt (3%)
120g sugar (2.4%)
= 5270g total pickle
1.9 g cure1 per kg meat gives just under 120ppm, I used 9.5g total.
Cross check:
Accounting for fact cure1 is only 6.25% nitrite:
9.5g cure1 x 6.25% nitrite = 0.59375g nitrite in pickle.
**FSIS Handbook nitrite ppm calc:
**
(0.59375g nitrite × 1,000,000) / (5270g meat+pickle) =112.6ppm
So, upon equalization after 2 weeks, each part of the meat and pickle will have 112.6 ppm nitrite. This is the INGOING NITRITE, AND IT IS THE NUMBER THAT IS REGULATED, and what FSIS cares about. Here are the limits:
200 ppm --Immersion or pumped HAMS, which is what my product actually is, a shoulder ham
156ppm - ground meat, sausage
120ppm - bacon, expected to be fried so lower limit to avoid nitrosamine formation.
Analysis
At 112.6 ppm, I am well under the actual 200ppm immersion ham limit.
I am ALSO under my own self-imposed 120ppm bacon limit, which I use because despite not being a belly, I do intend to fry this up to eat, thus subjecting it to the bacon heat environment that drives the lower 120ppm FSIS limit
Cooking times for Pathogen Lethality come from the FSIS Cooking Guideline for Meat and Poultry Products, Revised Appendix A. This is the U.S. guide that gives cooking methods and time/temperature tables needed to ensure germs are all killed. Used by Inspectors and Health departments for all commercial operations. Available here:
www.fsis.usda.gov/guidelines/...