Good things come to those who wait

Sloane’s dry-cured Back Bacon

People have been curing meat for centuries as a way to preserve valuable protein. Animals were typically slaughtered in the autumn after spending a long summer feeding nutrient-dense, natural food. Common examples of meat preservation are salting and drying, but even boiling and brining actually are methods to preserve meats.

Bacon is one of the most commonly used types of preserved meats. Sadly most modern and commercially produced bacon is cured so quickly they lack the flavour that a good bacon should have. For example, today bacon can be injected with cure and made in a matter of hours.

However, a traditional, dry-cured bacon takes a week or two to produce, if not more.

There are two main ways to cure: brining, also known as wet-curing, and dry-curing.

A well-made, brine-cured bacon can be good, however, most modern bacon is no longer actually left to brine for as long as it should. Instead, producers inject the meat with water to speed up the process and add weight to the product, often adding about 15% brine to the meat.

The bacon lacks flavour and shrinks when cooked. The water seeps out of the meat and the bacon ends up boiling rather than frying and crisping up.

Sloane’s bacon

Sloane’s Dry-cured Streaky Bacon

At Sloane’s we dry-cure all our bacon. Dry-curing brings out the water in the meat and intensifies the flavour. In fact, rather than adding 15% water, we’re drawing out about 15% to create a deep flavour. The traditional way to dry-cure was to simply rub the meat each day with a salt mix and drain the water until cured. This method makes a very salty bacon that can keep without refrigeration.

However, at Sloane’s we measure the exact amount of salt mix and seal it in a bag. Consequently, our bacon makes its own brine that’s later discarded rather than left in the meat. As a result, we get a consistent product with a salt content suited to a modern palates.

Once cured, our bacon is dried and then slowly smoked to produce a great flavoured bacon that doesn’t shrink down to nothing when cooking.