We occasionally hear from people who don’t like (or at least don’t eat) cured pork products because of the salt and sugar content, the sodium nitrite, or because they simply prefer the flavor of fresh pork. If you are avoiding nitrite salt-cured pork but instead paying extra for “naturally” cured pork products, you are likely being deceived. Here is our old blog post on why “natural” cures are a scam which are probably less healthy for you than the regular stuff. If you want to avoid added nitrates, you’re going to have to just avoid commercially cured meat. You can make salted and smoked pork belly at home, instead of bacon. Just be aware that the reason cure recipes use pink salt (sodium nitrite) is to safely prevent dangerous toxins which could make you sick or kill you. Of course many people have salted and smoked meats without using sodium nitrite and never had a problem, but there is a risk and you should know what you are doing.

Here is what we would recommend you do if you want a half hog but don’t want cured meat.

Pork belly

Get this in 2-3 pound roasts. It’s very popular to leave the skin on and slow roast it so that the skin crisps in the rendering pork fat. Poke holes all over or cut slits to let the fat out. Without skin you can braise it such as in chashu. There are also many options to roast or braise pork belly in cubes, or fancier cooking options such as lechon kawali (simmer the cubes of pork belly until they are tender, then let them air dry and fry them). For the most versatility, leave the pork belly as a skin-on roast; you can always cut the skin off and cut the roast into cubes, later.

Uncured pork leg

With some fat left on, our pork legs work fine for making boneless roasts. It’s not quite as good as the pork shoulder but it’s certainly good enough. Leg steaks are also excellent. You’ll want to braise them or otherwise slow cook to keep them from drying out. Because of this, you likely don’t need to worry about steak thickness as much as with a pork chop, where thin chops are less forgiving of overcooking. A thinner leg steak will braise faster. As with the belly, cubes of leg meat are versatile and can be used in stews, braises, or grilled on skewers. You can always cut up a roast into cubes later.

Get the ham hock

If you’re avoiding cured meat for health reasons but you do enjoy the flavor, by all means make sure to get some cured and smoked ham hocks! Yes, these are cured and smoked, but while you can certainly eat the meat if you want to, what they’re really best for is to flavor things like beans and rice or vegetable soups. You get the salty, smoky flavor of the ham hock, but diluted in whatever broth you’re using, which means you can control and limit the amount of salt you ingest. Just remove the hock after it has given its flavor to your broth. Unless you are on an extremely strict diet, you’ll be able to enjoy the flavor of cured and smoked pork without actually eating it.