The first step: prepare materials. Fresh meat from any part of the pig can be used to make bacon. The choice of meat material mainly depends on your preference. Generally speaking, it is better to choose pork belly with skin. The bacon produced in this way is fat but not greasy. When I was a child, I liked to eat pure fatty meat because I was short of oil in my belly. I felt that only fat bacon was more fragrant. Nowadays, when making cured bacon, I usually choose meat that is half fat and half lean. After buying the fresh meat, cut it into strips 3 to 5 centimeters wide, not too wide or too narrow. If it is too wide, the salt will not penetrate into the middle of the meat. If it is too narrow, it will easily lead to the meat being overly salty. Do not wash the meat with water after cutting it. If you feel that any area is dirty, just use a knife to scrape the outer layer of the meat.

The second step: pickling. For the salt to marinate bacon, it is best to go to the market to buy some coarse-grained natural sea-dried salt. This salt has more minerals and has large particles. The marinated meat will be particularly fragrant. If not, use the salt we use for cooking. Yes, the amount of salt used is generally about 8 taels to 1 jin of salt for 10 jins of meat. Spread the salt evenly on the meat, and it's best to rub it with some force when applying the salt. Then put it in an earthenware or ceramic container, cover it and marinate it for 7 days. If you are diligent enough, you can flip the vat once in the middle and exchange the positions of the meat on top and bottom. If you don't have pottery or porcelain containers at home, you can use an enamel basin, but you can't use plastic containers.

Step 3: Dry. After 7 days, take out the meat and use the tip of a knife to pierce the skin of one end of the meat piece and tie it with a hemp rope knot. Then hang the meat piece in a sunny and ventilated place to fully dry for 3 to 5 days. The climate in the north is dry and the sunshine is abundant, so you can dry it for 3 days. In the south, where the air is more humid, you can dry it for an extra day or two. In short, the moisture in the meat must be dried. At this point, the entire pickling task is complete, it’s that simple!

Step 4: Save. Bacon has strong antiseptic ability and can be stored for a long time, usually 3 months. Usually, just hang the bacon in a cool and ventilated place at home. If it is unsightly to urban families, hang the dried bacon in a cool and ventilated place for three or four days, and then put it in a pottery or porcelain container or an ordinary carton. . The air in the south is humid, so in order to prevent the bacon from getting moldy and oyster-like, take it out after a while and hang it on the balcony to blow air. The climate in the north is dry. In order to prevent the bacon from being completely dehydrated and turning into "bacon stone", it can be packaged in plastic bags. I don't agree with storing bacon in the refrigerator because it will seriously affect the flavor of the bacon.

If you want to marinate other cured fish, cured duck, cured chicken, etc., the method is the same as the method of curing bacon. For cured fish, you can choose carp, herring and other fish with thicker flesh. The bigger the better. Open the fish and remove the internal organs, then spread the salt evenly. When drying, use small sticks to cross open the belly of the fish. This can be done for cured duck and cured chicken. Make.

What needs special emphasis is that, as mentioned at the beginning of this article, now is the best time to pickle cured meat. Bacon, bacon, as the name suggests, requires to be cured in the twelfth lunar month, that is, it must be processed between "light snow" and "beginning of spring", not even one day! If the twenty-seventh of the twelfth lunar month is the beginning of spring, and you wait until the twenty-eighth of the twelfth lunar month to marinate meat, the processed meat will only taste like ordinary bacon and will not have the aroma of bacon. The twenty-four "solar terms" discovered by our ancestors are so magical! The reason why bacon needs to be marinated in winter is because the temperature is low in winter and bacteria are not easy to breed. After winter, spring is the best time for bacteria to reproduce. The microbial environment has changed, so the taste of meat is different. As for why there is no cured meat just one day after the beginning of spring, no one can explain this. It is a secret of nature. This is also the reason why we pickle bacon without any condiments and have the aroma of cured meat. Because the ambient temperature has an impact on the cured meat, in households with heating in the north, containers for cured bacon should be placed in unheated places such as balconies or kitchens.

Generally speaking, the cured flavor of bacon comes out within one month after it is marinated and dried. The best time to eat bacon is from the 15th day of the first lunar month to before the Dragon Boat Festival, when the bacon tastes the most fragrant. Bacon left in the natural environment may smell bad after the Dragon Boat Festival. Not only does the taste deteriorate, but it may also contain some toxins.