On the tails of Friday’s popular post about bacon, we give you another mouth-watering tribute to cured meat.

There is something about the transformation of a simple cut of pork into sausages and salumis that smacks of alchemy. Our relationship with Italian delicacies like prosciutto, pancetta, and mortadella is usually limited to ordering them from the deli counter of a market or Italian specialty food store, so it’s easy to believe that this feat can only be accomplished by aging nonnas laboring away somewhere in a hill town outside of Bologna. We assume they know things about pork and charcuterie that we could never hope to, so we step to the counter and humbly order our quarter pound of sopressata like everyone else.

I never considered trying to cure pork on my own until I found myself far from the dependable supply lines of Italian food that I had become accustomed to when living in my native Boston. While staring at an overpriced, watery, shrink-wrapped hunk of pancetta in a market recently, I decided that it was time to give it a go. I wanted to make linguini carbonara—the first thing other than Trader Joe’s microwaveable burritos that I learned to cook—and I wasn’t going to make it with this unsavory looking pancetta.

Pancetta is often referred to as “Italian bacon” but the label falls short of describing its unique flavor. Unlike its American cousin, pancetta isn’t smoked, so it imparts a more subtle flavor to dishes rather than dominating them. It’s excellent not only in classic pasta sauces like carbonara and amatriciana but also with vegetables such as asparagus.

Curing your own pancetta is probably the most rewarding of all home charcuterie projects. It requires few specialized ingredients (which you can order from Butcher & Packer) and is quick to prepare. And the result is phenomenal. Your home-cured pancetta will surpass what you can get locally and will give something extra to everyday dishes.

Making pancetta does require one ingredient you’ll want to track down locally: pork belly. If you don’t have a butcher nearby, try a local Asian market, as they typically carry pork belly in their meat section. In terms of technical knowledge, all you need to learn to make pancetta is how to roll and tie the pork belly once it has been cured, something you can pick up relatively quickly from a Cook’s Illustrated tutorial. And drying the cured pancetta can be done easily using spare space in your wine fridge or a cool basement.

I won’t tell you that making your own pancetta is entirely simple or that I didn’t make a few mistakes along the way. I managed to knock the bowl of curing mix I had carefully prepared off the counter and found myself trying to fend off my two golden retrievers—intent on cleaning up for me—with one hand while trying to scoop the curing mix into a dust bin. But that’s part of home cooking. It’s never as simple as it seems on television, but the results are always worth it.