Nothing beats making your own bacon, and you can do it with little fuss, if you are patient enough
I blame it on Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.

And on the huge amounts of preservatives found in supermarket bacon. And on the too-salty, meat-of-dubious-origin stuff that passes for bacon at some restaurants (Turkey bacon? Really?)
But mostly, I blame it on Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.

First, a quick primer on the aforementioned gent. TV viewers whose cable box is perpetually tuned to Channel 69 will know him well.

To those who have never heard of the Asian Food Channel, he was a sous chef at the famed River Cafe in London before he decided in 1998 to leave the city and head to the hills - specifically the Dorset countryside.

Since then, he has spent much time dedicated to rearing and growing his own food, a passion that has been well documented in his River Cottage TV series, and one which leaves those of us who have to work for a living insanely jealous.

Anyway, part of rearing your own farm animals involves curing, salting and smoking various body parts after said creatures have been brought to slaughter.

It is a noble art, actually, and a class of cookery by itself, this business called charcuterie. And which wannabe chef has not dreamt of making his own bacon or curing his own ham?

But since a large part of this art seemed - to the untrained eye - to hinge on hanging giant slabs of meat in the open to cure, many assume it can be done only in temperate climes.

Try imagining what would happen to a leg of pork left hanging for weeks or months in Singapore's tropical climate and you get the picture.

In any case, intrigued by his work, and suitably well-versed on the curative and preservative properties of a humble box of kosher salt, I decided to have a go at it and ordered a book on the subject.

It turns out that right here in Singapore, one can churn out fabulous cured meats, sausages, pickles and the like with minimum fuss and effort.

All you need is time, lots of patience and one or two essentials that you will need to get online (provided, of course, you do not have a source for them here).

Which leads us, then, to bacon.

According to Charcuterie, The Craft Of Salting, Smoking And Curing by Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn (WW Norton, 2005), bacon is possibly the easiest type of curing you can do at home.

What results is unlike anything you have ever tried.

It does not curl up and practically disappear when you fry it, like the stuff you get from supermarkets. Or turn into something akin in flavour and appearance to a pork biscuit.

Best of all, homemade bacon is a textural treat: There is no doubt you are mashing down on a superior piece of meat.

Curing your own also gives you options: Cut into big chunks, they give stews and soups a big lift. Roasted, whole slabs are a treat at parties. And sliced just so...well, admit it, there are few things that say 'weekend morning' better than the snap and crackle of bacon in a hot pan.

The experimental cook who has a good grasp of the flavours that can be imparted by various herbs and spices can go much further with bacon as well.

Adding maple syrup to the cure gives the meat a heavenly, sweetish tinge, for example.

Or if you prefer a more savoury taste, add garlic, pepper, juniper berries or anything else you can think of. The possibilities are endless.

Though it is a good start, amateur charcutiers need not stop there: pickles, hams, terrines, sausages - all are possible, with a little imagination and a good guide.

It is about as close to rearing your own meat-producing animals as Dorset is to Defu Lane, but spiritually, the home-schooled charcutier here inhabits the same spiritual orbit as Fearnley-Whittingstall.

Saucisson sec, anyone?

HERE’S THE CURE

Before starting on bacon, a warning: Pink salt is indispensable to the dry cure recipe.

It contains nitrite, an important ingredient that does several things to meat: preserves colour, keeps rancid flavours away and, most importantly, prevents many bacteria, particularly those which cause botulism poisoning, from growing.

Proceed without it and there is a real risk of poisoning occurring, so do not go looking for substitutes.

If you cannot get pink salt from a local source, order it online from www.sausagemaker.com, where the stuff is sold as Insta Cure #1. Note, however, that though pink salt costs just about US$9 (S$12) per 550g bag, shipping it to Singapore costs about US$90.

To cure bacon, two things are essential: pork belly and a basic dry cure. You can get pork belly from most butchers. The pity is that most of the stuff here comes from factory-raised, rather than farm-bred, hogs, and so they lack some flavour.

If you can find speciality meats imported from smallholders, go for that – the flavour pay-off will be worth it. But if not, fork out a bit more for the best meat you can afford.

HOMEMADE BACON

Basic dry cure
450g kosher salt (look for the Morton brand at Market Place supermarkets)
225g granulated sugar
50g pink salt
2kg pork belly

Method
1. Combine the ingredients for the dry cure. You will need 50g of it per 2kg of meat. The rest can be stored in an airtight container indefinitely.

2. Coat the meat evenly with the cure, place it in a sealable plastic bag. If you prefer a sweeter cure, add about 5Tbs maple syrup or honey at this stage. To go the savoury route, try adding 2 to 3 cloves of smashed garlic, some black pepper or a few sprigs of fresh herb such as thymeor sage.

3. Seal the bag, then refrigerate the meat for seven days. After a week, it should feel firm. If it still feels soft, like raw meat does at its thickest part, refrigerate for another day or two.

4. Once it is ready, remove the meat from the bag, rinse it well and pat thoroughly dry.

5. At this stage, most recipes call for smoking the meat, but since smokers are rare here, using an oven works just as well. Place the meat on a tray, and roast it in a preheated 95 deg C oven for two hours. It is ready when a meat thermometer inserted in the thickest part of the pork registers 65 deg C.

6. Take the pork out of the oven, remove the skin with a sharp knife, slice the bacon, then fry over medium heat and enjoy. You can refrigerate what you do not use for up to two weeks or freeze for up to a month.

This article was first published in The Sunday Times on August 3, 2008