My vascular consultant, Mr Murphy, has suggested that I don’t have too much of the fatty stuff, in particular saturated fat.

Even though pork fat is high in monounsaturated fat and oleic acid, which are the fats that are good for you in olive oil, I still need to reduce it. Hence, I’m removing all the tasty bits off a loin of pork to just leave the eye!

Buying this ready-made, if you don’t want 10% added water, is expensive. Sainsbury’s charges £21.88/kg for dry-cured. Whereas pork loin’s about £7/kg and the cure costs pennies.

“Ah”, I hear you say, “What about all the fat and meat that you cut off?” Well, it just so happens that I’m making some polony sausage and a garlic and ham luncheon meat; I’ll use it in that. I know they’ll not be low-fat, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it!

I’ve made this according to the new EU curing standards, which use lower amounts of sodium nitrite.

6th October 2026

Firstly, trim the loin of pork to remove all but the central eye.

For every 1 kg of trimmed meat, use:

19 g Salt. Sea salt is good, or kosher salt (US)
5 g Sugar, I use Demerara (US Turbinado)
1.9 g Cure #1
0.3 g Sodium ascorbate

You can add herbs and spices if you want; thyme and black pepper are nice, but beware, this bacon takes on flavour very quickly, and for this reason I’m doing it plain.

For other weights, use the cure pro rata. There’s a calculator below.

Mix the cure ingredients well and rub them into the meat.

You then have two choices:

Method 1:
Put the meat into a food-grade bag. Wrap it, excluding as much air as possible – I have large bags and often apply the cure with the meat already in the bag. Alternatively, vacuum pack the meat, pulling just a light vacuum – enough to keep the cure on the meat.

Put it in a fridge and turn it daily, giving it a rub through the bag as you do so, every day for 7 days. Longer won’t hurt. A small loin probably won’t need that long, but it’s best to be on the safe side.

Method 2:
Put the meat on a rack/grid in a food-grade container. Note: cheap metal racks might react with the meat. I use plastic mesh racks.

Cover the container and put it in the fridge. Give the meat a rub every day for 7 days. An alternative to a rack is to arrange the container on a slope so that any liquid can drain without the meat sitting in it.

I’ve done one by each method; the one on the left is on a grid in a container, which is in a food-grade bag. The one on the right is just wrapped in a food-grade bag.

In both cases, after 7 days, give it a rub with a paper kitchen towel to remove any excess cure and to dry it off. If you’ve used herbs/spices, you may want to rinse them off under cold running water.

13th October 2026

The one in the bag lost 1.92% of its starting weight, and the one on the rack lost 3.1%.

Put the meat in the fridge to dry; hang it if you’ve space, otherwise put it on a rack/grid and turn it regularly. If it seems to be drying out too much on the outside, wrap it (loosely) in baking paper/parchment.

16th October 2026

I’m smoking one piece: the one cured in a bag. I’ve left both pieces in the fridge for 3 days; they’ve lost a little more weight. The piece in the bag is now going to be cold-smoked. To explain for our US readers, bacon in the UK is only cooked at the point of service; it’s sold, sliced into rashers: thin slices, either smoked or unsmoked.

I’m using a ProQ cold-smoke generator to smoke it. Mine’s the larger Artisan model, but they both work the same way. I’ve put it in my Masterbuilt smoker because it was convenient; virtually any appropriately sized container will do: a drum or kettle barbecue, or even a cardboard box!

I smoked it for 8 hours; with other bacon, I would smoke for longer, but 8 hours is enough for this.

17th October 2026

The smoked bacon has joined the unsmoked bacon back in the fridge; they’re individually wrapped in baking paper (parchment paper). I’m leaving them for a few days, primarily for the smoked one to ‘mellow’ a little.

25th October 2026

I’ve sliced both pieces. The beauty of medallions is that if you don’t have a bacon slicer, they’re easily sliced with a knife. They’ll be vacuum-packed and frozen in 100g (ish) amounts.