OT- how to preserve bacon?

[336A]

This has been bothering me for some time now, I hope some one here will be able to help me with this question. When watching movies you always see a character going to a store to get provisions. Of course one of the items asked for always seems to be bacon. So how were our fore fathers able to pack bacon along with them while out on the trail without it going rancid. I know that you can smoke bacon but was there a more common way to preserve bacon that was used instead?

[Gun Smith]

You've heard the term "salt pork". Preserving bacon with salt, saltpeter, vinegar, and spices was a common method. It could be smoked, and jerkied also. Any of the methods kept it edible for weeks to months. Look up preserving bacon on the net. There are many methods.

[Rimfire McNutjob]

This is the only way I know of to do it ... modern slacker style "Tactical Bacon".

[AJMD429]

My parent's generation evidently just 'salted' it way more than it is now, and it was I think allowed to dry more somehow. I had some back in the '60's that was just kept out on the counter-top like we might the summer sausage; the lady fixing it just peeled off a couple pieces and tossed it in the skillet with some eggs I'd just fetched her from her chicken coop.

... I love poetry, long walks on the beach, and poking dead things with a stick.

I just noticed that Sig-Line . . . sometime I'd like to see some wistful Miss America gal give an answer like that when they ask her what her favorite things are. . .

[Doc Hudson]

I don't have the exact recipes and quite frankly don't have the actual know how but there are three main ways to cure bacon:
Smoking
Salt Curing
Sugar Curing
Combintion of tow or mor methods.

Properly smoked and cured, bacon or ham will last for months if not years.

The smoking process involves several days hangin in a smoke house with the proper temperature and smoke maintained to dry and cure the meat. Prior to the smoking process, the meat must be brined in a salt or sugar solution, along with other spices and/or chemicals which pull out moisture from the meat.

By pulling the moisture out and replacing it with the salt or sugar solution, the meat is rendered proof against bacteria that causes spoilage. It does not prevent the onset of mold. I've heard many folks speak of going out to the smokehouse,wiping mold off an hanging ham ans cutting a big slice off for cooking.

Now I can't speak for Western Farms and ranches, but here in the South, one of the most important buildings on the farm was a good smokehouse. The one on my family's farm was used for smoking meats on up into the late 1940's or early 1950's. I do not remember it being used as such during my childhood, but it still served as a storage place for preserved foods.

As someone else said, ther should be lots of on-line information about preserving food, but if you can't find what you want on-line, I'm pretty sure that at least one of the FoxFire Books has a chapter on smoking bacon and hams.

[Rimfire McNutjob]

... I love poetry, long walks on the beach, and poking dead things with a stick.

I just noticed that Sig-Line . . . sometime I'd like to see some wistful Miss America gal give an answer like that when they ask her what her favorite things are. . .

It was on a bumber sticker on the wall of a local restaurant ... I adopted it. Who doesn't love poking dead things with a stick really.

[Chas.]

You cure the pork side/belly just like you do country ham. Pack it in salt with a very small amount of nitrate (1-1.5% by weight). Keep cool (about 40 degrees) and take it out of the salt when it quits weeping(should be about 7 days per inch of thickness). When you first pack it, water will pour out for a while. When that stops, it's cured and can be kept at room temp, although cooler is better so the fat doesn't get rancid. You can substitute sugar for up to 20% of the salt. Cold smoking after the cure is optional if you like that smoky taste/smell.

[Beaker]

I tried to save my bacon once before someone else salted it with a 12 guage.

[Cast Bullet Hunter]

If you can find "Real" bacon, salt cured and smoked as it should be, there really isn't an issue with preserving it. Enough salt, and remove enough water, from any meat, all you need to do is keep the bugs from it and it will, literally, last for years. Keeping the bugs away is the real reason why meat is smoked, it is the drying aided by salting which preserves it.

The problem is that modern "Bacon" as you get it in the store wasn't processed the old way. It is cured by being injected with chemicals and flavorings so when cooked it somewhat resembles real bacon. It isn't salted nearly enough and retains far too much water and the "Smoke" is just a flavoring. The only way to keep it more than a few (very few) weeks in the refrigerator is to freeze it. What used to take days to process, from Hog to finished product, is now done chemically in a few hours, from Hog to shipping.

I have a friend who drove truck. One contract involved transporting livestock to the packing plant. He told me years ago that he has, literally, transported pigs to the packing plant in the morning and later the same day picked up a load of processed meat, includng Ham and Bacon, which had been processed from the very animals he had delivered that morning.

The best Bacon I have seen for over 25-30 years is the bulk packed "Ends & Scraps" carried in some stores. This seems to be much closer to the proper method of manufacture, and lasts longer in the refrigerator, than any pre-sliced Bacon. I wish I knew what they do with the rest of it!

[Rusty]

My grandfather used to cure his own hams. I have the recipe around here somewhere written in his own hand and he passed on in 1963. I'll have to try and see if I can find it. I seem to remember it was for a 200 pound hog. There was salt, red pepper, black pepper and salt peter. After the mixture was rubbed all over the ham it was hung in the smoke house with the foot end down for at least two weeks. I can still remember a cool day in the fall being called "a good day for a hog killin."

I also remember my grandmother taking a slice from a ham kept in the basement where it would be taken upstairs into the kitchen and scrubbed to get the green covering off then rinsed well before it was fried for breakfast. The grease left over would have some water and a bit of black coffee added to make red eye gravy.

[Kid Cossack]

Our modern world is just about one hundred kinds of fake.

[Old Time Hunter]

My Grandparents, when they slaughtered a pig, would slab the pork bellies, salt the begabbers out of em, roll 'em in heavily salted cheese cloth and hang 'em from the rafters in the food shed along with hams, beef jerky, and whatever else they could round up. After hang'n until they felt they were dried out, they would unroll the cheescloth and hang the slabs in the smokehouse (sometimes right next to the chubs!). When they felt that they'd been smoked enough, down to the root cellar they went to hang until used up. I can remember wiping mold off of 'em every once in awhile, but the stuff still tasted good! Grandma would have us fetch eggs from the chicken house while she peeled, boiled potatoes, and started frying the bacon. By the time we would come back with all the eggs (sometimes a couple dozen or so), she would have the potatoes sliced and cook'n in the bacon grease. Darn, that brings back memories... scrambled eggs (sometimes had my favorite "over easy"), crisp bacon, a passel of fried potatoes, and toast made from homemade bread....I can almost smell it!

[Blaine]

Down in Panama, the rich people bought hams, and bacon at room temp. in brown burlap bags.....never tried any..WAY too expensive. We're I so inclined, I could sell canned hams from the commissary for 75 bucks, but I don't like Panamanian jails...

[336A]

Our modern world is just about one hundred kinds of fake.

Kid your not kidding about that. To everyone else thank you for helping shed some light on this for me. It is really sad that a lot of the old techniques that were once common practice are slipping away in this modern age

[Old Ironsights]

I read the OP and my first thought was...

"preserve" bacon? I thought that's waht bacon was... pork bellies preserved for long term use...

[piller]

My Father said that they osed Morton Salt brand Sugar Cure when he was a kid. It was salt and sugar, and something else that he didn't remember. They hung the hams and the bacon up and rubbed the Sugar Cure onto it every day until it dried out and quit making the Sugar Cure moist. It would then last for a long time. He said that his mother used to soak it in water for a few hours before baking a ham so that it wasn't too salty. Salted fish were also common up into the 1940s. The salt would preserve fish. With all that salt, is it any wonder that many people died young?

[Noah Zark]

What the others have said -- salt curing and hang to dry. The salt dries out the moisture from the meat and renders it unfit for bacteria.

Anyone ever eat prosciutto, Spanish Iberian or seranno ham, or pastrami, or corned beef? Same cure process. In fact, corned beef has nothing to do with corn. The term "corning" is an old term that refers to salt curing. Learned than from Alton Brown in a "Good Eats" episode.

Noah

[Chas.]

My Grandparents, when they slaughtered a pig, would slab the pork bellies, salt the begabbers out of em, roll 'em in heavily salted cheese cloth and hang 'em from the rafters in the food shed along with hams, beef jerky, and whatever else they could round up. After hang'n until they felt they were dried out, they would unroll the cheescloth and hang the slabs in the smokehouse (sometimes right next to the chubs!). When they felt that they'd been smoked enough, down to the root cellar they went to hang until used up.

OTH, that's a new method to me. Due to the weeping(blood, water, tissue fluid) of the ham after salting(non-iodized), the cheese cloth would be quite the mess. Normally they are packed with salt on a flat surface or in a wooden box until cured. Then the salt is brushed off and they're wrapped in cheese cloth or a cloth bag and hung. Sometimes after the salt is brushed off, they're covered well with black pepper, but it really serves no useful purpose. Insects won't bother them when they're packed in salt, but after the salt is brushed off flies will blow them and they'll get skippers. That's why they're wrapped in cheese cloth.

I haven't tried Morton's cure, but I'm sure it works well. Just never needed it since I bought salt in large sacks at the Co-Op.

BTW, I cured my own hams for several years, but now have no place to do it. Maybe someday....

[Mokwaw]

My Grandparents and Great Grandparents did their own butchering and preserving. Grandpa said they used black pepper rub to keep the critters away, flies, mice, etc. and it was cheaper than cheese cloth (he was a very frugal man). He said mice and other furry critters would be attracted to salt, just like cows, sheep and deer are attracted to salt blocks. Didn't have this problem when using black pepper.

[fordwannabe]

Obviously I have associated myself with a bunch of YANKEE'S Haven't you ever heard of smithfield country ham. It has been salted until it is hard and SAAAAALLLLLTTTTYYY! You buy it in a bag and it is just hanging in the store you then cut off a small slice and put on a biscuit or roll and eat or if you soak a slice it cuts down on the saltiness. Gotta be kinda careful though it will only keep for like 100 years or so. This is the way bacon used to be preserved as others said. I remember about 1970 or so I was in my grnadfathes garage and I saw what looked to a 5 year old like a dead mans head(dried and covered in green stuff that I had been told don't eat stuff that looks like that, hanging from the rafters and said to POP whats that? A ham he said when it's ready we'll eat it and I remember thinking you eat it I ain't eating that, but I din't say it. If you've never tried it do it's a treat but small amounts if you don't want to pucker up. I kept some in the truck with me so I would always have something to eat for a while. Tom

[Saltcreek]

A good 357 Magnum will save your bacon every time. I tried smokin' bacon but the rollin' papers get geasey and it's hard to light.