Bacon is cured before it is smoked. This means that it is covered in a salt and sugar mix in order to preserve the meat. Liquid comes out of the meat and the salt, sugar, and any flavourings go in. At the same time we use some nitrites in order to prevent any bacteria from growing on it while we are processing it.

Make the cure

I use a basic dry cure that I learned from the book "Charcuterie". The recipe is either:

450g kosher salt

225 grams sugar

50 grams pink salt

or

450g kosher salt

425g dextrose

75g pink salt

I use the dextrose method as it's supposed to be less sweet than using regular sugar. I get my dextrose at a bulk food store. The pink salt came from Butcher-Packer. One pound will last you a long time and it's cheap. Pink salt is regular salt with 6.25% sodium nitrite. Don't confuse it with sodium nitrate, which is a different preserving agent. The stuff you want also goes by the name Prague Powder #1.

Mix your dry cure in a resealable bag. One recipe does around 10 pork bellies, so feel free to scale up or down as needed. It stores fine, just make sure to get all the air you can out of the bag before you seal it up so it doesn't clump.

Apply the cure

After you have the cure, place the pork belly on a tray and put 1/4c of cure on it. Gently ruby the belly to cover it entirely. You may need to add some more cure. Place the belly along with any cure that fell off into a plastic bag and set aside. Repeat with the remaining bellies.

At this point you can add some flavouring if you want. It's fine without, but you can try:

Maple syrup (30ml)

Add lots of black pepper

Brown sugar

Garlic

Add your flavouring if you want, get all the air you can out of the bag so that it makes good contact, and seal. Put it in the refrigerator for 7 days.