Ask the Bacon Experts?

No, it does not have to be cured. But, curing has more effect than just increasing shelf life. It also has the effect of removing and stabilizing moisture in the belly. This affects cooking and texture.

Modern bacon is a lot less salty than it's old counterpart, which had to last without refrigeration.

You could soak it in water to draw out some of the excess salt after the cure and before smoking. Other than that, the reason for curing agents we use today are that they inhibit the potential for growth of the bad thingies without needing as much salt, so as long as you use the proper amount of curing agent and it gets into the meat you will be safe with lower levels of salt. Like Bob said, way back, they just used salt to keep it safe, and it took a lot. You could look into injecting I suppose.

What kind of recipe did you follow? Just curious.

No you don't have to cure it, but curing will give you the nice pink color, it will be moister, and the salt in the cure acts as a carrier for other flavors you might want to add.

Nowdays, us home curing folks don't really do a "preservation cure" because we all have a refrigerators. What we are doing is what I call a "flavor cure". It takes some of the attributes of cured meats that we like, but without the harshness of a preservation cure. Think about the difference between a country ham and a city ham, or salt packed cod, verses cured and smoked salmon.

Many curing techniques call for a soak-out step which reduces saltiness, followed by an equalization step (this is a refrigerated rest following the soak-out) which mellows the flavor and evens out the moistness. These two steps really help your product.

^^^ Yep, just suck up the knowledge from ThirdEye's site. It's really helped me out in my endevours..

Cheers!

Bill