Wild Pork Canadian Bacon, Part One

Our north-of-the-border neighbors can scream about it till the pigs come home, but Canadian Bacon isn't bacon. It is, however, one of our favorite pizza toppings and pretty danged yummy. This two-part series shows how we cure and smoke our Canadian bacon made from the backstraps of a wild pig.

Being from the Midwest, I love sorghum molasses. This recipe substitutes sorghum for the traditional brown sugar normally used when curing Canadian bacon. The difference in the final product is subtle, but it's there. I think the sticky sorghum helps to hold a bit more smoke flavor as well.

Since this was a small pig (my favorite for table fare), the loins were on the small side. Because of this, I only cured them for three days. Larger loins can go four, five or even six days in cure before smoking in order for the brine to penetrate deeply into the meat.

I like to cut my pork loin into more or less equal sections before curing. In this case, the loins weighed in at about 2.5 pounds each (I told you it was a small hog) so I cut them each into two roughly 1.25 pound sections. Keeping the meat in equal portion sizes ensures that the brine penetrates at about the same level for each piece.

In this first part, we trim the loins, mix and apply the cure, then vacuum seal the meat and allow it to cure in the refrigerator. In part two, we will rinse, smoke and slice the finished product.