This is interesting. Del and I butchered a couple of pigs ourselves, and did all the cutting up, etc. I cured and smoked the bacon, including jowels. I didn't cure hams, because neither of us is all that fond of ham. We both prefer fresh pork in beans.
Anyway, we slaughtered and processed 2 ourselves, paid a neighbor to process one. Sold a 4th, not really having room in the freezers for another one. A couple of years later, we raised a single hog alone, and took that one to a processor.
We liked the job
we did cutting up the hogs better than either that we had processed for us. The only thing we liked better was they way they were able to slice the chops and steaks better than we did, because they had proper meat saws. Later I did use a sawzall to split huge turkey carcasses, and that proved to work so well I wish we'd tried it on the hogs.
With both hogs we had processed, we got back a lot less bacon than when we cut it up ourselves. I cut the jowels bigger, too. I think they trimmed off a lot more than I did, and ground a good part of what could've been bacon, into ground pork. I still cured and smoked it myself. I also did my own sausage seasonings, and mixed it myself. Most commercial processors use commercial sausage seasoning, and it almost always contains MSG, something I try to avoid. Besides that, a lot of commercially prepared bacon is too salty for my tastes. I cure with a lot of salt, but before I smoke it, I soak some of the salt back out. I only smoke it for about 3-4 hours, and it's been plenty to permeate the meat with a wonderful smoke flavor. I cut the bacon into 1-3 lb slabs, and freeze. I slice it as we use it.
For curing, I use regular pink curing salt, but you only use a tiny amount of that mixed with regular salt, and I add some sugar to cut the harshness of the salt. I also add crushed vitamin C, because that's what prevents the nitrites from converting into whatever that is that's carcinogenic. They use another version in commercial bacon, either sodium erythorbate, or sodium ascorbate. I use ascorbic acid. It doesn't take a lot, I use more than is required, but you can't taste it in the final product.
I dry cure, by rubbing the bacon slabs with the curing mixture, and stacking in a plastic pan I've drilled holes in the bottom of. I place that tub inside one without holes, on top of a couple of plastic food containers, so there's a space between the bottom one and the top one, to allow liquid to drain out of the bacon. I let it cure in the fridge, for about a week, turning and re-arranging the slabs daily. Then rinse, soak over night in fresh water, and let it drain and dry a bit, at least over night, sometimes 2 nights, in the same curing pans, before I smoke it.
I cold smoke it, by having a very small amount of charcoal in the fire box of the smoker, and put the smoking wood on top of that. I prefer maple wood, apple, or hickory. It doesn't get warm enough to spoil, and it's not in the smoker very long, either.
I only do a small amount at a time. I know they say not to freeze pork before curing, but I did freeze part of it, and it turned out just as good as the first lot. My slabs were not very even, I had a lot of odd shapes, but they sure tasted good.
I look forward to reading the results of your salt-only cures. I have had what they call "country ham" here in KY, it's salt only, smokehouse cured, and they sell it hanging in grocery stores kept unrefrigerated. I don't care for it. It's way too salty for my tastes, and it always has just a slightly
off flavor, like it's not
quite gone bad, but close. People don't get sick from it, at least I never have, but I just didn't care for it. I'd like to know if yours does that, or if it turns out better. Our winters are not consistently cold enough too hang meat unrefrigerated, at least not anymore. That may be why the hams taste the way they do.
That's why I cured the bacon the way I did, and didn't try to hang it in a smokehouse or anything like that. Couldn't count on the weather staying cold enough, except during some of our freezing spells, and that's not good for curing either, or so I've been told.