You have not lived until you've been to a Chinese grocer and asked for slab of pork bellie (sic.) by holding up a much smaller, pre-cut piece and pantomiming that you'd like four times that amount all in one piece. If you go, you'll likely have to speak to 3 butchers and a couple of helpful customers, but it's worth it just to see the guy with the knife bring out a pork side and show you where he plans to cut it.

It came bone in, but now I have ribs in addition to bacon makings.

~*~

Alton Brown has five recipes up on the foodnetwork site from his "Scrap Iron Chef" episode. Ostensibly, these were for use in his cold smoker conversion crafted from a bank of school lockers. Not a single one of these treatments calls for curing salts.