I came across a recipe [1] for salt curing without doing a water rinse after curing. The idea of using only enough salt to cure the meat made a lot of sense to me, most recipes end up with way too much salt that you have to wash off afterwards.
I stuck with the 2.5% by weight ratio of salt to bacon. We have a nice chamber vacuum sealer so I used that to seal the meat while curing it. I don't have a slicer unfortunately, but partially freezing the slab right before slicing made it easy enough. Slicing soft pork fat is no fun, getting the meat a bit stiff and icy works wonders when slicing!
On the first batch I used maple syrup basically the same as the recipe. The author noted wanting to double the amount of syrup - I stuck with 2% by weight and it was almost too sweet for me, I wouldn't do more.
I actually just sliced and packaged another slab tonight. For this one I did half as much syrup and did a pretty strong costing of cracked black pepper. No clue how it will turn out, but it smelled great when slicing it! I'll probably try a few slices tomorrow morning before freezing most of it for later.
I wonder if your experience with maple syrup is different from the author’s because of differences in pork belly size. My recent food experiences lead me to believe that sugar doesn’t penetrate solid foods deeply even when left over days or weeks. If that’s true, your unwashed bacon and the author’s could vary from the author’s by surface area. Or it could be a subjective matter of taste.
