Bacon

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Bacon has been in the human diet long before refrigerators existed, when salt was the only reliable defense against spoilage. In the 1770s, a man named John Harris opened what is considered the world's first commercial bacon processing plant, in Calne, Wiltshire. That single step transformed a domestic chore into an industry. Today, bacon is a cultural touchstone, a nutritional flashpoint, and a flavoring agent built into the architecture of cooking on several continents. How did a preserved pork product become a nearly universal food obsession? And what exactly is it that makes bacon different from every other form of salted meat?

• 2. Curing and Smoke

  ›

  Before artificial refrigeration spread through the modern world, curing meat was not a culinary choice. It was a survival strategy. Salt drew moisture out of the flesh, and that hostile, dry environment kept bacteria from taking hold. Bacon is cured through one of two methods: wet curing, where the meat is injected with or soaked in brine, or dry curing, where it is rubbed with salt. Bacon brine typically contains nitrites or nitrates, which accelerate the curing and help the meat hold its color.

  After curing, bacon may be dried for weeks or months in cold air, or it may be smoked. Smoking itself is a craft with real variables. Different woods produce different flavors, and less common fuels like corn cobs or peat can push the taste in unexpected directions. The process can take up to eighteen hours, depending on how deeply the smoker wants the flavor to penetrate.

  The Virginia Housewife, published in 1824 and considered one of the earliest American cookbooks, treats smoked bacon as an assumption rather than a choice. The book gives no hint that bacon could be anything other than smoked, though it offers no guidance on flavor, only a warning to prevent the fire from getting too hot.

  Sodium polyphosphates, such as sodium triphosphate, are sometimes added during processing. These compounds make the finished bacon easier to slice and reduce the amount of spattering when the strips are cooked in a pan.

• 3. Cuts and Kinds

  ›

  Side bacon, also called streaky bacon, comes from the pork belly. Its defining characteristic is long parallel layers of fat and muscle running alongside the rind. This is the standard form of bacon across the United States.

  Back bacon uses meat from the loin and belly in the middle of the pig. It carries less fat than side bacon, and it dominates the market in the United Kingdom and Ireland. In those countries, the plain word "bacon" almost always means back bacon.

  Pancetta is an Italian side bacon, sold either smoked or unsmoked. After curing, it is typically rolled into cylinders. Guanciale is another Italian variety, made from the jowl of the pig. It is seasoned and dry cured but not smoked, distinguishing it from American jowl bacon, which is cured and smoked.

  College bacon and cottage bacon occupy more specialized corners of the category. Collar bacon comes from the back of the pig near the head. Cottage bacon is cut from a boneless pork shoulder, which is typically shaped into an oval before curing. Canada developed its own regional variant: peameal bacon, an unsmoked back bacon that is wet-cured and coated in fine-ground cornmeal. Historically, the coating was ground, dried peas. It remains especially popular in southern Ontario.

  In Australia and New Zealand, middle bacon is the standard retail product, combining the streaky belly section with a portion of the back loin. Some supermarkets have begun selling the loin alone as "short cut bacon" for diet-conscious shoppers, typically priced slightly higher than the full middle cut.

• 4. Regional Characters

  ›

  Japan provides one of the sharpest contrasts with Western bacon traditions. Japanese bacon, pronounced bēkon, is cured and smoked belly meat, similar in origin to the American product. The key difference is that it is not sold raw. Japanese commercial bacon is processed and precooked, giving it a ham-like texture. Separately, sliced raw pork belly known as bara is widely used in Japanese cooking, appearing in yakitori and yakiniku, but it is a distinct category from bacon.

  Germany straddles older and newer traditions. The German word Speck overlaps in meaning with bacon in ways that do not map neatly onto English categories. Germans use the word bacon specifically to mean Frühstücksspeck, or breakfast Speck, which refers to cured or smoked pork slices. In Bavaria, grilled pork belly known as Wammerl holds its own as a popular dish. In southern Germany and Austria, small bacon cubes called Grieben or Grammerln have been a kitchen staple for generations, used to add flavor to soups, salads, dumplings, and potato dishes. These have recently been sold ready-made in German retail stores under the name Baconwürfel.

  In Great Britain and Ireland, about 70% of bacon is sold in thin slices called rashers. Heavily trimmed back cuts consisting only of the eye of meat are sold as medallions. Unsmoked bacon carries the specific name "green bacon" in British usage. Hot bacon sandwiches are a cafe staple throughout the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland, and are commonly described as a hangover cure.

• 5. Bacon Mania

  ›

  Ebenezer Cooke's 1708 poem The Sot-Weed Factor, a satire of colonial American life, has a narrator who gripes that practically every food in America was infused with bacon. The complaint is almost three centuries old, but it took on a new dimension after 2011, when US bacon sales began a sustained climb.

  By 2013, sales had risen 9.5%, reaching what was then an all-time high of nearly four billion dollars. A survey by Smithfield found that 65% of Americans would back bacon as the country's national food. Celebrity chef Bobby Flay endorsed a Bacon of the Month club across print, online, and national television. Sara Perry's 2002 cookbook Everything Tastes Better with Bacon became a touchstone for the trend. Dishes like bacon explosion, chicken fried bacon, and chocolate-covered bacon spread through culinary blogs and YouTube.

  As of December 2016, the US national frozen pork belly inventory stood at 17.8 million pounds, the lowest level in fifty years, a data point that speaks to how thoroughly demand had caught up with supply.

  Writing in 2008 for Salon.com, Sarah Hepola offered a cultural diagnosis. She argued that bacon eating in a health-conscious era functions as deliberate rebellion. Her phrasing was vivid: "Loving bacon is like shoving a middle finger in the face of all that is healthy and holy while an unfiltered cigarette smoulders between your lips." She also suggested bacon had acquired qualities of the sexy, the kitsch, and the comic, concluding simply that "bacon is America." Alison Cook, writing in the Houston Chronicle, made a parallel case grounded in American history and geography, tracing the food's roots deep into the country's colonial past.

• 6. Health and Risk

  ›

  One 10-gram slice of cooked side bacon contains 4.5 grams of fat, 3.0 grams of protein, and 205 milligrams of sodium. A serving of three slices carries 30 milligrams of cholesterol. Sixty-eight percent of the caloric energy in bacon comes from fat, and close to half of that fat is saturated.

  Studies have consistently linked processed meat consumption to higher mortality and to elevated risk of cancer, cardiovascular disease, and type 2 diabetes. In 2015, the World Health Organization concluded that eating processed meats like bacon regularly raises the likelihood of developing colorectal cancer by 18%.

  Nitrites in bacon are a specific concern. These compounds can react during cooking to form nitroso-compounds, a category that includes S-Nitrosothiols, nitrosyl-heme, and nitrosamines, some of which are known carcinogens. US regulations cap the amount of sodium nitrite that can be present in bacon. Vitamin C in the form of ascorbate and sodium erythorbate can be added to greatly reduce nitrosamine formation, though these additives have no effect on S-Nitrosothiols or nitrosyl-heme. Vitamin E, known chemically as tocopherol, also reduces nitrosamine levels. Bacon fried at higher temperatures tends to produce more nitrosamines than bacon cooked at lower heat.

  US regulations create an additional complexity around labeling. Bacon cured with nitrites derived from celery or beets achieves the same chemical outcome as synthetic nitrite curing, but under USDA rules it must be labeled uncured and carry a notice explaining that no nitrates or nitrites were added except for those naturally occurring in celery.

• 7. Alternatives and Substitutes

  ›

  Macon, produced by curing cuts of mutton in the same way pork bacon is made, originated in Scotland. It spread across Britain during World War II as a direct result of wartime rationing. Today it is sold primarily through halal butchers as an alternative for Muslim consumers. Its appearance is close to pork bacon, with the main visible difference being a darker color.

  Turkey bacon approaches the substitution from a different direction. The meat is drawn from the whole turkey, then chopped and re-formed into strips that mimic bacon's shape. It can be cured or uncured, and is cooked by pan-frying. Cured turkey bacon made from dark meat can contain less than 10% fat, a significant reduction from pork side bacon. One trade-off is texture: the low fat content means turkey bacon does not shrink during cooking and has a tendency to stick to the pan.

  Vegetarian bacon goes by several names including facon, veggie bacon, and vacon. It contains no cholesterol and is typically made from marinated strips of textured soy protein or tempeh, which is fermented soybeans. Two slices carry about 74 kilocalories. The category of substitutes also includes beef, chicken, bison, and coconut-based products.

  The popularity of bacon in the United States has generated a range of flavoring products for those who want the taste without the cooking. Bacon Salt adds the flavor to other foods. Baconnaise is a bacon-flavored mayonnaise. Bacon Grill is a tinned product similar in form to Spam. Bacon ice cream has moved from novelty to a commercially available product, reflecting how thoroughly the flavor has been abstracted from the original cut of meat.