Curing bacon - its generally cured with sugar, salt, - how does the sugar not translate to a lot of carbs?


(Bansaw) #1

I got some “English” bacon today but the butcher said, “you need to cure it.”

So I looked up curing and its basically adding sugar and salt for 3-4 days . How does adding so much sugar not translate into a much more increased carb count for bacon ?


I have a question about bacon
(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #2

Sugar is optional. Look around. You’ll find bacon without sugar.


(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #3

Possibly because it doesn’t get absorbed—that’s my speculation, anyway.

I was quite surprised the other day when someone asked a similar question about a brand of sugar-cured bacon, and when I checked the USDA Food Composition Database, that brand, and all the other brands I checked out, showed 0 g carbohydrate per 100 g product.


(Bob M) #4

I have used some recipes at times that called for brining in sugar and salt. I’ve left the sugar out and also put in the sugar, but I wonder if you’re brining say pork chops for 1 hour in sugar and salt, how many carbs could you be getting? (I need to brine two pork chops in salt+sugar and two in just salt, make the recipe, and do a taste test.)


(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #5

@PaulL I used to think the USDA FCD was the gold standard. I have since discovered that the USDA does little of its own testing and instead relies upon test results presented by various producers. They apparently only retest if the presented results look suspicious. I am currently attempting to determine whether or not any sugar used in the curing gets absorbed. According to this, sugar is added to reduce the harshness of salt’.


(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #6

Yes, it appears to but exactly how much… Does the fried bacon taste sweet? This is only the abstract, but it reveals that little is actually known about sugar/carb absorption into cured meats. The full article is behind a paywall unfortunately.


(Bob M) #7

It’s also a re-calibration of your taste buds. I’ve used pickled red peppers (bell peppers) in a pork chop recipe, and the peppers tasted sweet to me. I also make pickled eggs with red onions, and the eggs taste sweet to me. No actual real or fake sweeteners are added.


(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #8

I wondered about that. But I believe any real problems are likely to be with heavily-processed foods. Bacon has been part of human culture for centuries, if not millennia, and is a “known technology,” as it were. And you are right; the tastes of salt and sweet are antagonists. I remember the first time I read a recipe for sweet-and-sour pork. It contained an amazing amount of salt and sugar.


(David Cooke) #9

Originally making bacon was a way to preserve pork, and I saw it being made in Portugal in the traditional way 40 years ago. The only ingredient was a lot of salt, rubbed into whatever piece of meat was to be stored. A lot of table salt.
The salt pulls out the moisture in the meat. Those guys didn’t bother with smoking the bacon or baking it in an oven, although of course this would help prolong the life of the bacon.
I take a Kilo or more of meat. In a cup I mix salt with pepper and nut meg (because I have a lot of nutmeg) and rub it in liberally, the meat goes into the fridge, where I turn it every day, throwing out the juice at the bottom of the container. When the bacon feels dry and firm, at about 8 - 12 days, I declare it to be bacon and eat it. I don’t even wash off the brine.


(Hyperbole- best thing in the universe!) #10

Refining sugar and curing bacon are both about 2000 years old. Curing meat in general is surely far older than that. But my google-Fu says bacon started in Saxony in the first century and sugar began to be refined in India at about the same time. But sugar was a luxury item until the 16th century. This tells me that sugar isn’t necessary for curing bacon.