Less Meat, More Flavor: Salt Pork

Salt pork has always seemed a very old-fashioned American ingredient; we think of Little House on the Prairie and other stories of pioneers with only long-lasting salt pork to give a little meaty flavor to their meals. Well, salt pork is still around, and it's very cheap, very easy to use, and a little goes a long, long way.

Salt pork isn't just American, of course; it has been used for hundreds of years by sailors and other travelers since it would stay tolerably fresh for long periods of time. It used to be made from any leftover bits of pork and pork fat left after butchering, which would be pressed into a barrel and salted down for preservation. It was a standard ration on ships, for soldiers and for sailors. Hardtack and salt pork were basic rations during the American Civil War.

Now, however, salt pork is made from pork bellies - just like bacon. It's much fattier than bacon though, and it's not smoked or cured like bacon. That fat and saltiness make it a good base flavoring ingredient for many dishes; it's traditionally used in Boston baked beans and other thrifty New England dishes.

Salt pork is a marvelously cheap and long-lasting meat. If you just want a little meaty flavoring for a pot of beans or dish of greens, it's a good option. Cheaper than bacon, and fattier, salt pork can be slowly rendered down to cook and flavor cheap vegetarian ingredients.

We use just a few small slices for our cooking. We recently made a pot of our Braised Green Beans. Green beans need to be cooked for a long time to let their flavor really emerge; if you haven't tried slow-cooked green beans you're missing something! That slow cooking is also benefited by a little meaty flavor. So we slowly cooked down a few small slices of salt pork, then sauteéd the onion and garlic in that fat - no extra fat required.

The sweet, mellow taste of the pork infused the whole dish - and we only used about a third of our $2.69 package of salt pork.

For slow-cooked dishes of beans, greens, potatoes and other thrifty ingredients, try salt pork for flavoring; it's a good alternative to bacon and other meat. Check out our post on beans and see if you can work a little salt pork into your next pot: How To Cook Beans

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Comments (5)

It seems like more of a Midwestern, East Coast ingredient--I don't know that I've ever seen it around here! Sounds tasty, though, and I'm all about thrifty right now.

P.S. Where is everybody??? Am I the only one who didn't get to take the day off?

Salt Pork IS cured, hence the "salt" part of the name and the reason it was a standard-issue ration for sailors (no refrigeration required). But you are correct that it is not smoked like bacon. That is the essential difference between salt pork and slab bacon. Fatback is fresh, unsalted.

http://www.epicurious.com/tools/fooddictionary/search?query=salt%20pork

Ah - thanks for that correction Andy!

My girlfriend went out of town for two weeks and told me to eat whatever I found in the refrigerator and throw out the rest before it went bad. In the back of the refrigerator I found a piece of chicken breast that was so old that it had gotten hard and discolored. Ewww. When she got home I proudly told her that I'd cleaned out the refrigerator including the really old piece of chicken. She said "we didn't have any chicken, that was the salt pork I was saving".

Protip: If you store salt pork in a refrigerator that you share with idiots like me, label it "NOT CHICKEN".

I tend to avoid pork-I don't eat much meat-but every once and a while I have a "nostalgic" meal of kale cooked down with a little salt pork to flavor, homemade corn bread and sweet pickle vinegar and Iced-tea; if I am really motivated, I'll also fry some chicken...