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Salt Pork is a slab of pork that is almost entirely fat.

It is not used as a "meat" in itself.

It is used instead small chunks to provide flavour and mouth feel to recipes.

The fat is cured in salt, and not smoked.

It may come from the back, the belly or either side of the back of the pig. Occasionally may have a streak or two of lean meat in it, particularly if it is cut from the belly of the pig.

Sometimes it may have rind with hairs on it.

Some people in North America say it's the same cut as American bacon (aka streaky bacon), but unsmoked. It certainly is that way in some places these days, but traditionally it wasn't at all. Traditionally, if there was a streak or two of any meat in it at all, you were lucky. It really was just all fat, and way cheaper than any kind of bacon. Now, though, with the increasing presence of meat in it, it is now sometimes as expensive as bacon.

It is used a great deal in cooking in the American South, particularly in soups, bean dishes, and with cooked greens. In the American south, it was sometimes referred to as "white meat."

Not the same as "fatback."

Cooking Tips
Some advise to soak Salt Pork first before use to leach some of the salt out, but the saltiness really depends on who processed it.

Substitutes
Ham (though it is much leaner so the taste will be thinner and it will have a smoked taste that the recipe probably didn't anticipate); unsmoked streaky bacon (available in the UK), or smoked streaky bacon (aka "regular bacon" in North America) blanched to remove some of the smoky taste, or fatback, with additional salt added to the recipe to compensate for the lack of salt in the fatback.

Nutrition
Raw Salt Pork, per 100g: 748 calories, 80g fat, 86 mg cholesterol, 1425 mg sodium, 5g protein, 6 mg calcium, 66 mg potassium.

Literature & Lore
"The best pieces of fat salt pork come from the back, on either side of backbone."

-- Fannie Merritt Farmer. Chapter 16. Pork. The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book. Boston: Little, Brown. 1918.

Also called:

See Also:

Fat, Pork Fatback

Other entries for:

Lard
Lardons, Lardo, Pork Fatback, Salt Pork, Speck

Other entries for: Pork

Bacon, Barrow Hog, Berkshire Pigs, Butcher Hog, Casertano Pigs, Crown Roast, Fore Hock, Fresh Ham, Gilt Hog, Ground Pork, Ham, Hog Jowl, Iberian Pigs, Kurobuta Pork, Mortadella, Oreilles de Crisse, Pickled Pork, Pig's Feet, Pork Belly, Pork Brawn, Pork Chops, Pork Crackling, Pork Cubes, Pork Cuts Illustrated -- British, Pork Hocks, Pork Leg, Pork Loin, Pork Ribs, Pork Rinds, Pork Shoulder, Pork Souse, Pork, Prime Collar, Salt Meat, Sow, Spare Ribs, Stag Hog, Streak of Lean, Tasso, Ventrèche, Zampino

Other entries for:

Meat
Affettati, Beef, Buffalo, Cap On / Cap Off, Game, Goat, Institutional Meat Purchase Specifications, Minced Meat, Offal, Paillards, Potted Meats, Poultry, Roasts, Sausages, Sheep, Steak, Veal, Venison, Yak