I ask for it at the butcher counter when I want to make Boston baked beans. I shop at WFM and a local market, plus we have independent butcher shops in my area, so I have a lot of choices, am pretty sure WFM has always had it.

I did not think of Whole Foods at all, Thank you. the one I can find at the stores is better than bacon. While I love bacon, the curing in it does taste different.

It is also called ’fat back’ and is sometimes labeled that way. I have found it at Publix most of the time, but really have to search for it. Good to know WF has it too.

What I bought, I got at Publix, but it does not look the same as I remember. Dad's was grainy with salt.

It seems to be seasonal in this area. If possible I would look at it first before purchasing. Slices are sometimes sold in this area as Salt Pork that are somewhat removed from the block you are thinking of. What I purchased was in slices and had been softened so while the texture was of cooked Salt Pork the flavor was not there.

My uncle used to use salt pork slab when we made chutneuy szalonna, but Dad always used a slab of bacon. Haven't had it in years....maybe time to do it again! But we need a crowd.

I've seen it in supermarkets, but if yours doesn't carry it, you could ask your butcher.

My local Walmart carries a sliced salt pork. I do not like the sliced. Like you, @Sherry8aNorthAL, I grew up with Mom cooking with the slab. Kroger usually has the slab of salt pork and also the sliced.

I also use smoked ham hocks and smoked pork neck bones for seasoning items like beans that have to be cooked for a while, and they seem to be easier to find.

I render chicken fat to make schmaltz fo other types of dishes.

I usually use ham hocks to make beans/bean soup with but they are hard to find these days. They're also much more expensive than they used to be for some reason.

I don't know about pork salt as I've never used it.

I've seen it as fat back pieces. They look like the end pieces of bacon in a big pack. They were grainy with salt. This was at Walmart. But for things like collard greens or purple hull peas, I use bacon fat and smoked turkey necks.

I have never seen it as a slab.

Salt pork, or Fatback comes from the back of a pig and is a hard fat that is preserved in salt. Bacon is typically belly and a softer sort of streaky fat that is cured and smoked. Salt pork isn't smoked. I would think fresh solid pork fat would taste the same-add salt. Salting does firm it up-draws out moisture-but would you care once it was cooked? You dont normally eat the piece of salt pork in a soup.

We never used it for soup but for beans and we always broke it up and mixed it to prevent fights as to who got a larger piece of it.

Last time I saw ham hocks it was in a small package and it was over $10 for two hocks that weighed 1/3 of a pound if that.

I’ve seen this at Vons & Albertsons. Hormel salt pork

i make my own ... take a pork loin, coat it with kosher salt all over for a week, then scrape the salt off and wrap in cheesecloth and put in the back of the fridge for a month.

I have used salted fat - or fatback - and it's always been in a sort of hunk, never sliced. I would cut off what I needed and put the rest in the freezer. I haven't gotten it in awhile, and I think the last palce was Whole Foods.

When I was a child it was a staple at our house. When the family butchered a hog in winter that cut of meat was washed and salted down in a big wooden box of salt.

It was kept in the smoke house. It had to be used before summer or it got rancid. At our house there was always a pot of dried beans or peas cooked with salt pork. And yes, it had lots of salt still stuck to it. Mother washed the salt off before she used it. MY daddy would tell me that if was "dead hog." I still see it in stores near the bacon display. It is cut in square like chunks, but no visible salt.

My mom used salt pork or "fat back" . I remember it exactly as grainy salty. It used to be quite common in the grocery store. I think, though, that it may be more regional and is much more a staple of the southern diet.

I buy good smoked ham hocks at the Amish market here on the East coast and use that instead. But not too often.

I bought a small ham hock from the grocery store one time for some reason. It was almost totally useless and I actually just threw it out. The ones at the Amish market have some good smoked meat on them and they give a nice smoked pork flavor to the beans or collards. They are not cheap, but what is anymore?

After reading this thread last night I decided to make limas and neckbones, cooking now, thank you all :)

Yes, this thread has inspired me to get some salt pork or pork belly (whichever I can find) and make some baked beans.

I hadn't thought of salt pork in years. When we were kids, Mom sliced and fried it. I remember it would curl up some and got real crispy. Mmmm.....now I can taste it.

when mom fried it, sis and I got to chew the rind

The Amish butcher where we have our beef and pork processed sell all of the unusual cuts and organ meat that most people don't want when they have an animal processed. We keep the liver, neckbones, and oxtail from our beef and the smoked ham hocks from the hogs. I think what would be considered hog fat back is probably ground into the sausage.

Glad you found some that worked.

And the ’salt’ isnt the same as table salt iirc. It is curing salt, which is not the same. I recall the same graininess being on the surface as you, Maybe the processing doesn't include as much curing or additional salt now, I dont know.

I hope the recipe turned out well. I've used salt pork in place of bacon where specified in some dishes. Not having the cured/smoked taste is important in some dishes.

Sherry, FYI, back in the midwest where I'm from, Salt Pork and Fatback are the same thing, all from the fat off the back of a butchered hog.

I think Salt Pork/Fatback is used anywhere hogs are slaughtered by the farmer and the meat kept for his resources. There is a saying that "... everything is used but the squeal..." and is probably pretty accurate.

Kate, Dad was from south Mississippi, very near the coast. My maternal grandparents lived in Grand Bay, Alabama. Growing up we lived in South Alabama. The white salt pork was what was used. They would of never "wasted" bacon in vegetables. I don't think I ever saw the one that looks like small pieces of uncured bacon until lately.

ETA: The slight different taste of the salt pork instead of cured bacon did make a difference.

Lone Jack, you may be right, they probably use the pure fat in the sausages.

Yes, Gooster, the pintos turned out the way he wanted, his mother's. Finally! I am not a huge fan, Dad never cooked them, and we could always get him a fix when we visited his parents. They passed a few years ago and I have been trying ever since.