Home-cured salo

Ingredients

• Pork back fat — from the back, skin on1.5 kg
• Coarse salt300 g
• Garlic — heads2
• Black peppercorns2 tbsp
• Bay leaves6
• Coriander seeds1 tbsp
• Paprika — for the coating2 tbsp
• Rye bread — to serve400 g

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1. 1

   Rinse the fat, dry it thoroughly and cut it into slabs ten centimetres wide.

   12 min

2. 2

   Cut deep slits every two centimetres in each slab, stopping short of the skin.

   10 min

3. 3

   Push a slice of garlic and a peppercorn into each slit.

   15 min

4. 4

   Crush the remaining peppercorns and coriander and mix them with the salt and crumbled bay.

   8 min

5. 5

   Roll the slabs in the mixture on all sides, pressing it into the slits.

   10 min

6. 6

   Pack them into an enamelled dish skin down, cover and refrigerate for a week.

   8 min

7. 7

   Scrape off the excess salt, roll the slabs in paprika and keep them in the freezer. Slice them thin and serve with rye bread.

   12 min

About the dish

The fat comes from the back, not the belly: there the slab is even, without streaks of meat, and it stays tender after curing. It should be at least four centimetres thick.

Salt goes on without measuring or stinting: the fat takes exactly as much as it needs, and oversalting it is practically impossible. That is a property of fat rather than a technique.

The garlic goes into slits rather than being rubbed on. On the surface it dries and turns bitter; inside it perfumes the slab over a week.

Worth knowing

• — Salo is cut only from frozen. Soft, it crushes under the knife and no thin slice is possible.
• — Use an enamelled or glass dish. In metal the salt reacts and leaves a taste behind.
• — Streaks of meat in the slab are not a fault, but such salo keeps less well. Meat spoils where fat does not, and the shelf life halves.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories

780 kcal

Protein

6 g

Fat

82 g

Carbs

12 g

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