Salt Pork and Other Pork Fat

[Shel_B]

How does salt pork differ from pork belly, the various types of bacon (pancetta, guanciale, typical American bacon), lard, and other types of pork fat?  Have I missed any other pork fats?

 

From a practical standpoint, can any or some of these fats be used interchangeably?  For example, in this recipe (CLICK HERE - Right now it seems that the recipe is available for viewing and download for free.  I can't say for how long that will be.) that calls for the rendering of salt pork.  There's also a good amount of home-rendered lard in my freezer.  Instead of running to the butcher and buying salt pork, could I use my lard instead?  What might I gain or lose by so doing?  Same question for the various bacons.

 

 

[chromedome]

The salt pork I'm familiar with is all fat, or at most has a thin streak of muscle through it. It's very salty. When rendered, it gives what I guess you'd call a kind of pre-seasoned lard. 

 

In Newfoundland, where my family originates, it's rendered for cooking fat and then the cubes of rendered fat -- "scrunchons" -- are strewn over the meal as a garnish and flavoring. 

 

[btbyrd]

Salt pork doesn't refer to one particular product, but rather a range of products cut from different parts of the animal including the belly, the side, and the back. Where I come from (Western NC), salt pork refers primarily to fatback, which is dry cured fat from the back of the hog. It sounds like the same product that chromedome describes -- all, or mostly all, fat that is very salty. It is typically used in the same way that he describes as well... cut it down into small pieces, render out the salty fat, and remove the "cracklins" to use as a garnish for the finished dish. Unlike bacon, fatback (and other forms of salt pork) are not typically smoked, so bacon isn't a 1:1 substitution. However, if you like smoke flavor, using bacon in place of fatback or salt pork is a viable option. Being unsmoked, pancetta or guanciale would be good substitutes as well (though the latter tends to be coated with spices that would influence the flavor of the final dish).

 

In the recipe you referred to, they're basically just using the salt pork as a source of fat. If you have rendered lard on hand, I'd just use that. (I have both lard and bacon on hand, and would use the lard. Smoke flavor doesn't seem right for that dish. But who knows, it might be delicious.)

[IndyRob]

I think I need scrunchons in my life.

[nonkeyman]

I am going with btbyrd on this. Salt pork itself is a range.

From there, each product has it's own unique qualities, it depends on the cut of meat, and location. You pointed out the range of Bacon. From there, there are products like lardo that are just cured in salt until they are cured all the way through. Lard itself is just pig fat that has been rendered and can't go back to its original state.

 

When I worked in restaurants I used to have to make Guanciale, pancetta, bacon, lardo, prosciutto, you name it. Some of these, we made one big cure for. For instance, the guanciale and pancetta. However, the bacon and lardo required separate salt mixtures and the prosciutto was all salt.

 

Mostly, we had different flavors we wanted out of the lardo and bacon.