Salt Pork Is Your Secret Ingredient For Better Soups And Stews

If you've never heard of salt pork — much less used it — it's high time you learned how to incorporate it in your recipes. Salt pork is an old-school (as in hundreds of years old) ingredient. There's an equally old tradition of using it to impart a deep pork flavor and a velvety quality to your soups, stews, or even as a way to upgrade your canned beans. You can think of salt pork as bacon's saltier, non-smoky cousin. Like bacon, salt pork typically comes from the belly of the pig and has tons of fat that melts into your dish as you cook. Best of all, you don't need that much to up the flavor and texture. 

Salt pork is cured using salt or a salt solution, doesn't have added nitrates, and isn't smoked like most bacon. Even though it's cured, store-bought salt pork should be refrigerated. The easiest way to incorporate salt pork into your soups and stews is to dice it up and slowly render the fat in a pan. You can then cook your vegetables in the fat to create a soup or stew base with added flavor, body, and silkiness. If you can't find salt pork at your grocery store, pancetta, an Italian salt-cured pork belly, is a good substitute, as is bacon, although its smokiness will come through in the soup or stew.

If you get store-bought salt pork, you shouldn't have to rinse it off before using. But be warned; it is salty, so you'll have to adjust the amount of salt you add to the recipe to taste. Some cooks soak the salt pork in water before cooking with it, but for the cooking method we recommend, it isn't necessary. Dice the salt pork and slowly render it in a frying pan or Dutch oven with a little water. You'll end up with the fat, which you can use for sautéing or sweating vegetables. You'll also make crispy little flavor bombs that can be used as a garnish to your soups or stews. 

For instance, you could incorporate salt pork into our basic tomato and herb vegetable soup by using the fat to cook the onion, garlic, and carrots. You can ten garnish the soup with the crispy salt pork bits. Similarly, one of the traditional five French mother sauces, sauce tomate, starts with softening the onions, carrots, and celery in rendered salt pork. This sauce can then be used as the basis for a delicious tomato soup. Traditional New England clam chowder also uses this technique, as does some potato stew recipes. Incorporating salt pork into your soups and stews doesn't take a lot of effort and the results are definitely worth it.