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How to Cook Salt Pork
Many people do not relish salt pork fried, but it is quite good to soak it in milk two or three hours, then roll in Indian meal and fry to a light brown. This makes a good dish wish mashed turnips, or raw onions cut in vinegar; another way is to soak it over night in skimmed milk and bake like fresh pork; it is almost as good as fresh roast pork.
Two methods for making salt pork palatable: a milk soak to pull out salt, then either a cornmeal crust and pan-fry, or an overnight soak and a slow roast. The soak is the whole point of the recipe.
- The soak is not optionalThe soak is the point of the recipe -- commercial salt pork is heavily cured and can be punishingly salty without it, though the recipe's opening implies some people ate it fried straight. Two or three hours in milk for frying, overnight for roasting; discard the milk, which will be very salty. Plain water draws salt out too; milk is said to leave the meat milder and to help it brown.
- Indian mealPlain cornmeal, and in a Virginia book of this date most likely white and stone-ground. Medium grind gives the best crust; fine meal turns pasty against the wet meat.
- What salt pork isCured fatback or side pork, salt only, no smoke and usually no nitrite. It is not bacon and not pancetta. Look for slabs with a good streak of lean, since pure fatback will render away to almost nothing in the pan.
- Slice thicknessFor frying, about a quarter inch. Thicker slices stay raw-tasting in the middle before the cornmeal burns. For the baked version, keep the piece whole, a pound or two.
- "Bake like fresh pork"The book gives no temperature. As a modern equivalent, a moderate oven of roughly 325-350F, uncovered, allowing about 30 minutes per pound and finishing at 145F internal with a rest.
- No added fat, and no added saltThe pork renders enough to fry itself; start it in a dry pan over medium heat. Season the turnips and onions lightly for the same reason, and taste before salting anything on the plate.
- The accompanimentsMashed turnips or raw onion sliced into vinegar are both there to cut fat and salt, which is exactly what the dish needs. A sharp cider vinegar suits it better than wine vinegar.
- YieldA pound of salt pork feeds three or four as a main dish, fewer if the slab runs to mostly fat.
Salt pork was the backbone of the Southern larder before refrigeration: hogs were killed in the cold months, the sides salted down in barrels, and the meat drawn on all year. The result was reliable but monotonous and very salty, which is why cookbooks of the period spend so much effort on ways to make it taste like something else. Housekeeping in Old Virginia, compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree and usually dated to 1878, with later printings, gathers contributions from Virginia housewives and reflects a postwar economy in which the plain barrel staples had to be stretched and disguised rather than replaced. The milk soak is a piece of practical kitchen chemistry that predates any explanation of it, and the cornmeal coating points to the other constant of the Virginia kitchen: corn, in some form, at nearly every meal.