20 October 2026
We made bacon
We sent a photo of our bacon to a few people. Every one of them wrote back to say they were hungry now.
Fair enough.
This started as a slab from our second butcher day, pulled from the freezer because we wanted to find out whether we could turn one of our own pigs into bacon we actually preferred to the stuff we buy.
The answer, according to Anthony, is yes. He has never met its equal. And that’s after he overcooked the first rashers.
We hot smoked it, so the meat cooked while it picked up the smoke. That part worked better than we expected: the flavour carried right through without becoming harsh, and once it was sliced it actually looked and smelled like bacon rather than an experiment we’d have to politely finish.
We cured it with plain salt rather than nitrite. Most bacon uses both. Nitrite helps with colour and keeping quality, which is part of why a packet from the supermarket can sit in the fridge for weeks and still look much the same when you come back to it.
Ours won’t do that. Without the nitrite, this bacon has a much shorter life ahead of it.
Not that it’s going to need a long one. There’s no way this lasts.
That’s the part we keep coming back to with food from the farm. Supermarket food is made to wait for you. Someone has already worked out how to keep it good on a shelf, then in your fridge, until you get around to it.
Fresh food is less accommodating. You have to plan around it a bit more: make an amount you’ll actually get through, eat it while it’s at its best, and accept that sometimes the thing deciding dinner is what needs using rather than what you felt like cooking.
We’re still getting the hang of that. It changes the kitchen as much as the farm does.
But the bacon itself is settled. We’ll make it again.