How bacon is made
Bacon is pork belly cured in salty brine with nitrite, then smoked for up to eighteen hours.
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- things upstream
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- raw sources
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- steps from the ground
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The short version
Bacon is salt-cured pork, usually from the belly. Factories inject the belly with a brine that carries salt, sugar and nitrite, or soak it in brine. The cured slabs are then smoked over burning wood, cooked partway, chilled until firm so they can be sliced, and the slices are laid out on paper and packed.
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Trim the pork bellies
Bellies are cut from the pig, trimmed to a uniform shape and sorted by thickness. Side bacon, or streaky bacon, comes from this cut and has long alternating layers of fat and muscle.
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Mix the curing brine
Water, salt, sugar and curing agents are dissolved. Brine contains nitrites or nitrates that speed curing and fix the color, and manufacturers may add sodium polyphosphates to make the finished product easier to slice and reduce spattering in the pan.
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Inject the belly
A row of needles pumps the brine deep into each belly, which is much faster than soaking or dry-rubbing. The meat then rests in a cooler so the cure spreads evenly.
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Smoke over wood
Cured bellies hang in a smokehouse. Different woods give different flavors, and the process can take up to eighteen hours depending on how intense the smoke flavor should be.
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Chill until firm
Bellies are cooled or lightly frozen, which makes the fat and lean firm enough to slice into even rashers without tearing.
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Slice into rashers
High-speed slicers cut the bellies into thin strips, and the slices drop in overlapping rows onto paper.
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Weigh and pack cold
Slices are weighed into packs, sealed and kept refrigerated. Raw bacon is cooked before eating, and some smoked and boiled types are ready to eat.
Worth repeating
- Bacon can be cured wet, by injecting or soaking in brine, or dry, by rubbing with salt.
- Neither table salt nor the nitrites used for curing is naturally pink, so curing salt is dyed pink to tell it apart.
- Canadian peameal bacon is wet-cured, unsmoked back bacon coated in fine-ground cornmeal.
Back to the ground
Follow every input upstream and bacon starts as these 7 raw sources.
Keep walking
Sources
Cite this page: "How bacon is made." Assembly Line, 2026-11-03. https://assemblyline.org/make/bacon