Tried curing my own bacon, ended up with salty shoe leather

Spent a whole Saturday on a 5 pound pork belly using a recipe from a forum friend in Portland, but I think I misread the salt ratio and it came out unbelievably salty. I followed the 3 week cure time exactly, then smoked it for 4 hours, and now I've got like 40 dollars worth of jerky that even my dogs won't touch. Has anyone else had a disastrous first cure attempt, and is there any way to salvage the meat or should I just accept the loss?

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piperbailey1mo ago

Tbh, the first cure almost always turns out rough, so don't beat yourself up too bad. But the part about the "recipe from a forum friend in Portland" might be your real issue. A lot of those backyard curing recipes don't account for humidity or altitude, and they often use volume measurements instead of weight, which is a big deal with salt. For the salvage part, soak the slices in cold water for a few hours to pull out some salt, but the texture is gonna be shot, so maybe crumble it into soups or beans instead of eating it straight. Honestly, your best move is to treat this as a learning fee, grab a kitchen scale, and find a cure recipe that uses grams or ounces instead of cups and tablespoons. Next time, aim for 2% salt by total weight of the belly, and you'll be way closer to actual bacon, not shoe leather.