Bacon - wet and dry curing

[YetiDave]

Hi all, I'm going to be starting a new batch of bacon off in a brine today and thought, why not wet AND dry cure it before smoking it? I've dry cured before but my product ended up way too salty for my liking, so wet curing was the solution. However I did like the altered texture from a dry cure. My plan is to wet cure for 4 days in a salt/sugar/nitrate brine with some herbs and spices then dry cure with a rub mainly consisting of a dry rub (juniper, coriander, some garlic etc) mixed with a little curing salt and some sugar for 24 hours. At which point I'll rinse off the cure then maybe apply a sparse coat of rub, hang for a day to form the pellicle and then cold smoke.

Has anyone else tried this wet followed by dry cure? I figured that the brine won't be as saturated with flavour from the herbs etc, so a dry cure for a day to toughen up the surface of the meat would draw in more flavour from whatever extras I choose to add to it. Thoughts? I'm quite new to bacon making so still experimenting, but I think my theory on this is pretty sound

 

[saf]

So the dry cure you did, you just used too much salt you can fix that by soaking in water for a bit depends on how much salt you need to take out of the meat. This will be trial and error. If you want to do a dry cure just use less of the curing mixture you don't need as much as you would think.

The wet and dry curing will work fine. I haven't done this my self but I have read about it being done. I assume it will be easier to control the salt content as the water will regulate the balance of salt the meat can take on. I would just add more spices to help with the flavoring. wet curing will help with rendering the fat out as well if you use the fat after for cooking. Not sure exactly how the dry curing after will change this.

I think you are set. I hope this turns out for you sounds great.