How to Make Real Old-Fashioned Bacon at Home (Easy)

Homemade bacon isn’t just more delicious and versatile than commercial bacon, it’s also surprisingly easy to make

Making your own bacon is super simple and delicious

Bacon! Bacon! Bacon!

Sorry, I just had to say it because it’s the way I (and millions of others) feel about this tasty meat.

Here in America we’re most familiar with bacon strips fried and served along with eggs for breakfast, or perhaps on a BLT or atop a burger for lunch or dinner. But, the truth is, bacon is one of the great flavors available to cooks, and can be prepared in a variety of ways that make it a wonderful addition to all kinds of food.

I discovered the versatility of bacon from a chef friend of mine about 10 years ago when he showed me how he made it for his restaurants: curing a pork belly that could be cut into french fry-like pieces called “lardons”, or into chunks for dishes like soups and chilis. He even had one dish that was basically a hunk of fresh bacon slathered with mustard and honey and baked until golden brown.

Yes, it was every bit as mouth-wateringly delicious as you might imagine.

Fortunately, bacon is easy to make at home. It requires no special equipment and just two ingredients: a pork belly and some curing salt. Just know that once you’ve had your own homemade bacon, the store-bought stuff is going to seem weak and flavorless by comparison.

Commercial versus Homemade Bacon

Most commercial bacon is made either by soaking a pork belly in the curing solution or, more often, by injecting the solution into the meat, which is faster. It’s then placed in a commercial oven where it’s cooked at a low heat to be finished. Smoke and other flavors might be added during the process.

Because most commercial bacon is injected with solution and cooked in a matter of hours, it tends to be lower in flavor and higher in water content, which is why it shrinks so much when cooked.

Homemade bacon, on the other hand, is dry-cured over a period of days and slow-smoked or oven baked to finish. The result is a firmer, more flavorful bacon that hardly shrinks at all when finally cooked.

How to Make Bacon

As I mentioned, real, old-fashioned, American bacon is really only two ingredients: pork belly and dry curing mix. You can add other ingredients such as brown sugar or maple syrup to make a sweet bacon, or pepper and bay leaf to make a savory, spicy one, and smoke it for additional flavor, but it’s not necessary. The interplay of pork belly and the curing salt is where the real flavor comes from.

Regardless of the type of bacon you want to make, here are the things you will need:

• A 5 lb Pork Belly (bigger or smaller is okay too, just adjust the recipe accordingly)
• Dry cure mix (see below)
• A large (e.g., 2 gallon) zipper-lock plastic bag or resealable plastic container large enough to hold the pork belly

Optional

• Sweet Bacon: ½ cup of brown sugar or ½ cup of maple syrup
• Spicy/Savory Bacon: ¼ cup cracked peppercorns, 6 crushed garlic cloves

Note: if you don’t have smoker and want that smoke flavor, add a teaspoon of liquid smoke to the cure

Basic Dry Cure Mix*

• 1 cup kosher salt
• 1 Tbsp sodium nitrite curing salt
• ½ cup granulated sugar or dextrose (corn sugar)

* You can also buy pre-mixed curing salt, often called “insta cure”, which is a combination of kosher salt (sodium chloride) and pink salt (sodium nitrite).

The curing salt and sugar ready to mix to make the dry cure

Dry curing mix is shelf stable and will keep for a long time, so don’t worry about having too much. Just put the extra in an airtight container and it’ll be good to go next time you want to use it.

Where to find Pork Belly

Typically, you’re not going to find pork belly stocked in your local supermarket’s meat department. If it’s a halfway decent market with a good meat department, however, you should be able to order one over the counter (here in Southern California, I like Stater Bros markets because they’ll do that for you, no problem). If you’re a Costco member, they often have pork bellies available too. Finally, there’s the good old fashioned meat market and, plenty of sources online.

Bacon Making Instructions

Once you have all your ingredients, the rest is pretty simple.

1) Trim the pork belly so the edges are clean and square, and there’s no dangling fat pieces.

Fresh pork belly ready for the cure rub (this one is about 11 lbs)

2) Rub the entire slab of pork belly with the curing mix so the top, bottom and all the sides are coated. Shake off any excess.

The pork belly cut in half, rubbed with the dry cure and ready to refrigerate

3) Place your cure-coated pork belly in the re-sealable bag or container. If you’re make sweet or savory bacon, add the extra ingredients to the bag / container, seal it and shake it to distribute evenly. Place it in the refrigerator.

Depending on the size of the pork belly, it’ll need about a week to rest in the fridge.

As it rests, you’ll notice liquid will begin to pool in the bag/container. Make sure to turn the pork belly daily so all the sides get to rest in the liquid.

Once your pork belly feels firm to the touch (again, about seven days, more or less), remove it from the fridge, rinse it with water and pat it dry.

4) If you’re going to smoke the pork belly, hot smoke it (i.e., at a smoker temp between 180° and 200°). If you’re going to oven roast it, place it in a 200° oven.

Either way, cook the pork belly until the internal temperature of the belly reaches 150° — usually between 2 and 4 hours depending on the size of the pork belly.

My smoker smoking bacon with hickory and oak woods

Once it hits that 150° mark, remove it from the heat and allow it to cool.

5) After your bacon has cooled, you can store it in the fridge for several weeks. Alternatively, you can cut in pieces, store some in the fridge and freeze the rest. Homemade bacon freezes quite well and will remain fresh for months if not years.

Making your own bacon is super simple and delicious

Other considerations

Cutting

You don’t have to slice your bacon like they do in the store. Bacon can be sliced, cut into small stick sized pieces (lardons), cubes, or chunks and used that way too. The different sizes and shapes of the bacon make it much more versatile when you’re using it in other dishes, whether they be salads, soups and stews, or as a side for other meat dishes.

Reducing salty / smoky flavors

Don’t worry too much about the amount of cure or smoke you give your bacon. If it turns out too salty or smoky for your taste, it’s easy to reduce the strength of the flavor. Simply blanch the bacon in boiling water for a minute or so before cooking. That will substantially reduce those flavors while still maintaining the texture and true bacon flavor.

Cooking tips

I find that if I’m going to be eating the bacon by itself rather than using it as an ingredient in a dish, it comes out best when it’s baked or roasted rather than fried.

The fat in homemade bacon doesn’t completely melt away like it does in commercial bacon, so when you cook it in the oven (350° to 375° usually does it), you’ll get a great combination of crispy and chewy rather than straight up crunchy.

Conclusion

So there you have it. Homemade bacon isn’t just more versatile and delicious than commercial bacon, it’s actually really easy to make. Once you’ve tried it, I’ll bet you’ll never really enjoy the store bought stuff again.