Coke-heads: Making bacon and getting crafty

Bacon is big. Bacon is heavyweight. Bacon is perfume, condoms, vodka, dresses and pretty much any other product you care to imagine. Why do you think Kevin Bacon’s so well-connected? Footloose? No, bacon. But what could be better than bacon? Making bacon. Go on, say it: ‘Oh, what have you been up to?’

‘Making bacon!’

The great news is that it is easy. When my partner-in-crime for this escapade first suggested curing meat I was skeptical. Then he said it mostly involves leaving it for ages and you can flavour it however you want. The challenge was on. Everyone and their dog has been crafting away on home brews and flipping cupcakes, but you can trump all that with some seriously exotic bacon. Now most people would have gone for some sensible flavourings, perhaps some traditional spices, herbs and seasonings. But this is Phagomania, and we had to see how far we could push this bacon. My natural instinct was to go for rum, cola and lime. Cuba Libre bacon.

Step one, get some pork. You can actually make bacon from just about any cut of meat from any animal, so the possibilities are boundless. But we wanted cheap, and picked up a large hunk of loin joint on offer at the supermarket. Now funnily enough, we had to improvise a rum, coke and lime marinade – it's not the kind of thing you can just pick up. 

You may have heard stories about coke dissolving meat into nothing, well The Skinny can happily report that is does not. But we did want to take the ‘bite’ out of it. We chucked two litres of coke in a pot, brought it to the boil, and then essentially mulled it, tossing in cinnamon sticks, nutmeg, orange peel and whatever else was lying around. We gazed in suspense as it reduced to a thick nectar. To finish: 300 ml of dark rum, the juice of 4 limes and 100 g of muscovado sugar.

It tasted like pure essence of the best Cuba Libre you’ve ever had, with the added cozy enjoyment of a great mulled wine. It was extremely difficult to part ways, so close was I to chilling the mix and slurping it over ice until I couldn’t feel feelings. But this concoction hadn’t come to town for that, it had a showdown with bacon to see through, and it clearly meant business. So we wished it bon voyage and poured it over the pork.

After a week of marinating (and a couple of turns) it was time to embrace the ancient art of curing. Simply salting meat is a great preserving method, and adding sugar helps the process and flavour. They didn’t use coke as marinade in ye olden days, but we’re sure that they would approve. With this sense of lore in mind, we deliberately avoided ‘pink salt’ that would typically be used for curing. It is laden with sodium nitrate, and I feel we get enough of that in our food and this was an opportunity to make something sincere and healthy (well, ‘healthier’, as far as salty meat soaked in booze and cola goes).

You want around a kilo of salt, and you’ll need a big plastic tub or very small bin to coat the meat in. In addition you want around 250g of sugar. The salt and sugar play a number of chemical tricks, but mainly they draws water out and preserve the meat by slowing down oxidation. Better make sure there’s room in fridge, we need to leave this bad boy in there for 2 weeks. From Phagomania’s experience, there will be complaints, so be prepared for your girlfriend/boyfriend/spouse/flatmate to argue fridge politics. Just remember: you’re making bacon, baby.

The final stage is to soak your meat. Stop sniggering. Leave it covered in water for 24 hours and this will draw out a lot of the saltiness. Do not do what we did and impatiently taste the bacon before the soaking, unless your favourite things are salt and disappointment. Drum roll. This is the moment you’ve been waiting for. The taste test. 

Cut as thin and consistent a slice as you can manage and chuck in the pan. The texture was both softer yet meatier than your regular bacon, almost flakey. I put that down to the marinade. However, salt sadly won the flavour battle for the most part. The edges had the lovely sweetness, especially where it had crisped up, but the centre had lost out on our ambitious flavourings. And I’ll admit it – the sharpness of lime was a bizarre, unwelcome guest, much like the last guy to leave a party. But hey, at least he had brought his own bacon.

Now what’s better than making bacon? Making smoked bacon! And what is better than that? Chorizo! We’ll tell you how we got on with that one next month.