Tom Parker Bowles: Rasher bashers beware, bacon's worth more than its salt
Bacon Connoisseurs' Week was celebrated a fortnight ago.
Not that most of us need any excuse to venerate the noble rasher. I honour a packet every Saturday morning, smoked streaky, cooked just the right side of burnt.
Sundays too, splodged with ketchup and crammed between two thin, pappy slices of cheap white bread.
Bacon, alongside ham, is salt pork's greatest incarnation, cut from the belly (streaky) and loin (back) of the pig
As for the rest of the week… well, I usually find a way, at some point or other, to pay my respects. But it’s no bad thing to be reminded to buy British, made from outdoor-reared pigs.
We’re pretty good at making the stuff. In fact, we’d have died out way before the dodo if we hadn’t mastered the art of salt and smoke.
One of the only reasons we actually made it over to Mauritius to decimate the damned things was thanks to a steady, long-lasting onboard supply of salt pork.
Bacon of hopeOn the subject of good bacon, Ramsay of Carluke’s Ayrshire smoked streaky bacon is some of the finest in the country. The butcher uses outdoor-reared pigs, and salts and smokes the old-fashioned way. Pure bacon bliss.
ramsayofcarluke.co.uk
Before the advent of fridge, supermarket and all-youcan-gobble cruise ship buffets, pork had to be preserved to feed us through epic voyages and hard winter months alike.
Bacon, though, alongside ham, is salt pork’s greatest incarnation, cut from the belly (streaky) and loin (back) of the pig.
And the best day starts, as ever, with a decent piece of pork.
It doesn’t have to be a rare breed (good bacon is no more about breed alone than decent steak is about simply hanging) but does need to have lived as civilised and al fresco a life as possible.
It’s salted (the mix might also contain saltpetre, sugar and various other spices and aromatics), then hung for a few weeks. And, should you desire it, smoked too.
Any butcher worth his, um, salt, will have his own special cure..
Fun in the ovenStacie Stewart is one of the finest bakers around. Having worked with her on Food Glorious Food, I can vouch as to the sheer depth and breadth of her knowledge. She runs thebeehivebakery.co.uk and her new book, Stacie Bakes, is an essential buy. The recipes are clear, concise, and actually work. To get a cack-handed baker like me wanting to bake cakes takes a very good book indeed.
Stacie Bakes, £12, PavilionProper bacon is miles removed from that mean and mealymouthed mountebank that sweats with shame the moment it hits the pan.
The mass-produced stuff may be a triumph of science over tradition – for the big producers, it’s all about speed and bringing down costs – but it makes for a very sorry bite
Dull, lacklustre and pumped with saline solution (the boob enhancement of the porcine world), it not so much leaps as lurks around the mouth, sullen and leeched of joy.
Even if you care little about the horrors of intensive farming, you cannot fail to be bored by the taste.
Apparently, though, we’re not allowed to eat processed meats at all.
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A recent European study concluded that any more than a small amount of bacon, sausage or salami could cause serious damage to our health.
Really? Even I could tell you that a diet consisting solely of bacon wouldn’t do much for the old ticker.
Regardless of whether it was hand-cured by flaxenhaired virgins or formed by vast, unthinking machines.
But to paint anything that contains nitrates (an ingredient much used in the curing industry) as inherently deadly is plain wrong.
Another day, another headline- hogging survey that is not quite as precise and objective as it likes to believe. The key to all this is, as usual, plain common sense.
A good diet is about balance, not myopic fads and half-baked purges. And if you are going to eat bacon, it should be more treat than thrice-daily ritual.
The less you shove down your gob, the better quality you can actually buy. As to giving it up altogether?
Yeah right. As Elizabeth Barrett Browning once wrote (though admittedly not on the subject of bacon): ‘How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.’
