PERFECT PIG

By CINDA CHAVICH

Salty, crispy, fatty, smoky – what’s not to like about bacon?

Served alongside your morning eggs or added to that toasted summer tomato sandwich, bacon is an essential ingredient. Almost every culture (save those that eschew pork) have come to the same conclusion, that salting and smoking the pig’s streaky belly bits turns something simple into something sublime.

THE FOOD

While you can now buy beef, turkey and even vegetarian “bacon”, true bacon is strictly made from pork bellies, a cut that’s heavily streaked with fat.

When you cook bacon, much of that fat is rendered away, and the kind of bacon you end up with on the plate depends on how fatty it was to begin with.

All bacon is cured before smoking and most cures include nitrites to fix the red color of the meat. Some butchers also make nitrite-free bacon but, in most cases, bacon contains at least some nitrites.

Salt, smoke and sugar are the other essential flavours in bacon. While some mass produced versions rely on artificial maple or smoke flavorings, the best bacon starts with a brine that balances salt and sugar to cure the pork, and a real smokehouse to add the essential woodsmoke.

The best classic bacon comes from European butchers – in Calgary that means the Polish, Hungarian and German experts in the smoking traditions. Italians also make their own special kind of peppery rolled bacon – called pancetta. Back bacon (a.k.a. Canadian bacon) is an entirely different animal – lean slices of smoked pork loin that’s more like ham than side bacon.

While you might find a “dry-cured” bacon from a small butcher, most bacon is “wet-cured”, that is, immersed in a salty brine for three or four days before smoking. Mass produced bacon is also pumped full of liquid and even phosphates and chemical flavours, to cure the meat faster and add bulk, not what you really want in your bacon.

THE FIND

Luckily, there are still some old-fashioned, European butchers left in Calgary who have their own small smoke houses and make their own smoky bacon from scratch, brining the pork naturally and smoking it over real wood fires. Nitrites are minimal, or non-existent, in these handmade meats, making them the tastiest and healthiest of all.

In foodie circles, the hottest thing is THICK bacon, sliced in slabs ¼-inch thick. When you buy bacon direct from small butchers, you can have it sliced the way you like it – thin (about 35 strips per pound), regular (16-20 strips per pound) or thick (12-16 slices per pound), and even buy bacon rinds to chop up for crispy cracklings.

I always ask for my bacon cut thick, too, but found the thinner slices, especially of the leanest bacon, were crisper when cooked.

Salting and hot smoking helps preserve bacon, but it only has a shelf life of a week the refrigerator. Wrap well and freeze for longer storage.

THE FIND

I fried two slices of each on the stovetop, and measured the amount of fat rendered. Since the size of slices varied, this isn’t a definitive test, but does offer some parameters.  I also tried baking the bacon in a 400F oven for 10 minutes (which actually didn’t work as well as some cookbooks suggest but is easy if you’re cooking for a crowd).

I tried six types of pork bacon, plus one beef “bacon” sample.

Herewith, my small survey of some of my favourite bacon:

The pepper bacon from Valbella Meats in Canmore was first in the lean department, leaving very little fat in the pan. It was a favourite, thinly sliced and crispy, with a lovely natural pork flavour.

At the other end of the fat scale was the German-style bacon from Regina’s at the Crossroads Market. It came in large, thick slices and had the highest ratio of fat to meat, cooked up crisp and was the saltiest of those tested. I rendered more than 8 teaspoons of fat from two slices – great if you’re looking for enough fat to fry your hash brown potatoes or collard greens. Rich and good for crackly bacon bits.

is a Polish butcher who selects his own Alberta pork, cures it with salt, spices but no sugar or nitrates, and smokes it in his smoke house for 6-7 hours. Jan then slow cooks his bacon and says it’s ready to eat when you buy it. When cooked crisp, this is lovely stuff, for my palate the perfect balance of salt, smoke and meaty pork flavour. I had 2 ½ teaspoons of bacon fat in the pan after cooking two medium slices.

The other three bacons tested came from the same shop – Second to None (STN) Meats – and from the local pigs with the highest profile pedigree, Broek Acres near Lethbridge.

The Broek family makes their own slab bacon from their pasture-raised, natural pork. The slices are large, lean and thickly cut, resulting in big pieces of bacon with a meaty texture.

STN Butcher Bob Choquette also makes his own bacon using Broek pork bellies – a similar product but with a little less salt, a little more smoke and a slightly lower price. Both samples (the largest slices) left me with 3-4 teaspoons of bacon fat in the pan. This is the kind of chewy, meaty bacon for a big BLT.

The other Broek bacon I tried came from their heirloom Berkshire pigs, and was much streakier and even tastier than their slab bacon. The bacon from this special breed was wonderfully sweet – closer to the nutty, sweet flavour of a good Spanish ham. Cut thinner, and with more crispy bits, this would be my first choice with breakfast eggs.

Choquette’s beef bacon is just that – salted and smoked beef brisket that’s more akin to jerky or corned beef in flavour. It’s delicious, though, very lean and just the thing for those who don’t eat pork.

THE FIX

For stovetop cooking, lay strips of bacon in a heavy pan and cook on medium-low heat, turning occasionally, until the fat is rendered and the bacon is crisp. Drain cooked bacon on paper towels to soak up any excess fat, and serve alongside your eggs or in your BLT.

The other place good smoky bacon shines is in soups and stews. Ask for double smoked bacon and buy it by the slab, so that you can chop it into small cubes. Render this bacon to start your dish, and use the fat for frying the onions and garlic, or browning the beef for stew. These bits of bacon, and the resulting bacon fat, are also the classic flavours in Cajun cooking, whether you’re making gumbo or cooking collard greens.

As they say, “everything is better with bacon”. Bacon goes perfectly with spinach in salad, it’s always excellent with eggs (whether fried or baked into a quiche), and these days you’ll even find the salty stuff paired with chocolate in desserts and confections.

Yes, it’s saturated fat, and yes, it tastes good. You may feel less guilty if you use it to sauté spinach or kale, or for a warm cabbage salad - just don’t throw it away.

Bacon is my passion, but you needn’t have a special penchant for all things porcine to find romance in a slab of salted pork. In the Middle Ages, a married couple who could prove that their first year of marriage was free of arguments, was rewarded with bacon, hence the saying “bring home the bacon.”

Literally (or figuratively), that still makes a mate a keeper in my books.

(This Urban Forager column appeared in Avenue Magazine)

©Cinda Chavich 2009

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