I sometimes find myself ranting about bacon in the supermarket – the injected water, the nitrates, the white gunk when you cook it. Grace and I went to the River Cottage HQ near Axminster to learn about curing and smoking, and today we started to make the dry-cured (pancetta style) bacon. Here’s the recipe:

Ingredients

• 1 whole pork belly, bone in, divided into three pieces
• 1kg salt
• 1 kg demerara sugar
• four bay leaves, thinly sliced
• 20 juniper berries, lightly crushed
• 25g freshly ground black pepper
• malt vinegar

Method

Mix the salt, sugar and flavouring ingredients, reserve the vinegarSprinkle the cure on the bottom of a clean box. Place the first piece of belly skin down, and add a nother layer of the cure, making sure that it is rubbed into the sides. Add the other two pieces of belly, repeating the layering with the cure.

Put a lid on the box and store in a cold pace / refrigerator. after 24 hours drain the liquid, and rub the belly pieces with more of the cure mix. Re-stack (rotating the bellies so the top one goes to the bottom) and return to the fridge.

Repeat this process for four days.

Wash the cure form the belly pieces, and then clean their surfaces with the vinegar. Pat dry, then hang in a cool dry place for 7 to 10 days before using. Slice as required, removing bones as you come to them. Can be stored in the fridge for around a month.