If you want to serve bacon you cured yourself on Christmas morning, start about a week before. Dry curing pork belly at home takes a few days in the fridge under a salt and sugar cure, followed by a few more days hanging to air dry, so a batch begun in the third week of December is firm, sliceable and ready for the pan when the big breakfast comes around.
It is a quietly show-off thing to do, and it takes far less active work than it sounds. Ten minutes rubbing cure into a joint, a rinse, a few days of doing nothing at all, then the best bacon sandwich of the year. Here is the timeline, the shopping list and the details that separate good bacon from the sort people talk about all day.
Why cure your own bacon at all?
Because it is a genuinely better product, not just a novelty. Most supermarket bacon is wet-cured, which means it carries a good deal of added water. That water is why an ordinary rasher hisses, foams and shrinks to half its size in the pan, leaving a puddle of white liquid behind.
Home dry-cured bacon works the opposite way. The cure draws moisture out of the meat rather than pumping it in, and the joint then air dries in the fridge, which concentrates the flavour and firms up the texture. The result is bacon that crisps properly instead of steaming, and does not vanish in the pan. On a morning when every burner is spoken for, that reliability is worth something on its own.
Our Bacon Making Kit supplies the cure and the seasonings, and flavours your bacon three ways: chilli and garlic, juniper and fennel, or pancetta. You supply the pork.
What do you need to buy, and when?
The shopping list is short. You need pork belly, and that is essentially it.
Streaky bacon is pork belly and back bacon is pork loin. We build the kit around belly because it is the thinner joint, so it cures faster and more reliably at home, and because streaky is the one most people actually want in a sandwich. If you prefer back bacon, the same cure and method work on a 500g pork loin joint with the skin removed.
Order the pork from a butcher if you can, and order it early. Butchers in the week before Christmas are working through a mountain of turkey, goose and beef, and a piece of belly is the easy thing for them to forget. Ask for it fresh rather than frozen, since defrosting eats into your timeline, and ask them to leave the skin on if you fancy pork scratchings from the trimmings while the bacon cures. Cut the skin into bite-size pieces, toss with salt and a splash of vinegar, then roast on a wire rack in a hot oven until puffed and crisp.
How does the curing stage work?
You rub the cure evenly over the whole surface of the pork belly, then refrigerate it for the time given in the booklet. That is the entire hands-on part.
The cure is a traditional dry mix of salt and sugar with sodium nitrite (E250) and sodium nitrate (E251). Those last two are what make bacon bacon: they protect the meat while it cures. This is not a place to freestyle. Do not reduce the cure, do not exceed the curing time, and keep the meat refrigerated from the moment it comes home to the moment it hits the pan.
Even coverage matters more than enthusiasm. Work the cure into every surface, including the edges and any folds, because a patch that misses out is a patch that stays soft. Pick one of the three seasonings at this stage, or if you have a big enough joint, cut it in two and do two flavours at once. Juniper and fennel is the one that tastes most like a proper Christmas breakfast.
When the curing time is up, rinse off the excess cure and pat the meat thoroughly dry. Rinsing is not optional, and it is also your main lever on saltiness: a more thorough rinse gives you milder bacon.
What happens during air drying, and where do you hang it?
After rinsing, the bacon needs to hang in the fridge to air dry. This is the stage that turns cured pork into something that slices cleanly, and it is also the stage that catches people out, because a domestic fridge is not obviously designed for dangling meat.
The trick we use: hang the joint from the top shelf so it dangles down into the door area where the tall bottles would normally live. That is the one spot in most fridges with room to spare, and it lets air move around the whole surface. Give it the time stated in the booklet. If your bacon still feels wet or floppy at the end, it simply needs longer, so leave it until it firms up rather than pressing on regardless.
Plan the whole thing to finish a day or two before Christmas rather than on the morning itself. Bacon ready on the 23rd gives you a buffer, a chance to fry a test rasher, and one fewer thing to think about on the day.
How do you slice and cook it on the day?
A sharp kitchen knife is all you need. By the time the bacon has air dried it is considerably firmer than raw belly and slices far more cleanly than you would expect. Chill it well first, keep the slices even, and cut thicker rashers than shop bacon if you want that meaty, chop-like bite. If you own a meat slicer, we are jealous.
Fry it as you would any bacon, and always cook it through. Because it is dry-cured it browns rather than boils, so it wants a slightly gentler pan and a bit of attention near the end. Leftovers should be sliced or cut into lardons before freezing, spread on a baking sheet to freeze individually, then bagged up. Freeze the joint whole and you will have to defrost the lot every time somebody fancies a sandwich.
Serve it in soft white bread with butter, or alongside the eggs while everyone else is still asleep and the wrapping paper is still folded. The Bacon Making Kit is hand-packed in Britain, and the leftover cure and seasonings mean January gets a second batch.
Christmas bacon FAQs
How far ahead of Christmas should I start curing?
Allow about a week from raw pork belly to sliceable bacon, following the exact curing and drying times in the booklet. Starting around the third week of December gives you a comfortable buffer.
Is home-cured bacon safe to eat?
Yes, when you follow the cure quantities and timings, use fresh pork, keep it refrigerated throughout and cook it through before eating. The cure is what preserves the meat, so never reduce it.
My bacon has come out too salty, can I rescue it?
Rinse it more thoroughly and soak it in cold water for an hour before drying to draw out excess salt. Next batch, do not exceed the curing time given in the booklet.
Can I make back bacon instead of streaky?
Yes. The instructions use pork belly because the thinner joint cures more easily, but the same cure works on a 500g pork loin joint with the skin removed.
Can I freeze the bacon I do not eat on the day?
Yes. Slice it or cut it into lardons first, freeze the pieces spread out on a baking sheet, then bag them up so you can take out a rasher at a time.
Fancy a breakfast worth getting up for? Browse our meat kits.
