English bacon cure?

[RobM]

Hi all,

I have had my OBS for about a year and a half and have made fantastic hot cure/bbq in it.  For better or for worse, I am ready to try bacon in it.

I have spent about half my time in the last year in the UK on business. While there, I grew to absolutely love English bacon.  Having been back for a bit, I am definitely missing bacon rolls for breakfast.  :P Since I want to try bacon in the BS, I thought I would attempt to make English bacon.  I searched the forum and only found a passing reference to it in a thread that quickly turned into a football (soccer) discussion. 

I know it is made from "back" meat.  Can I use standard pork loin for this?  Would a standard (wet) bacon cure provide the result I am looking for?  If not, is there a cure that you would recommend?

Thank you in advance.

-Rob

[Habanero Smoker]

Hi Rob;
Welcome to the forum.

From what I have been able to look up English bacon and Canadian bacon are very similar. They are made from pork loin or what you refer to as "back" meat.

I'm not sure what type of seasonings are mixed with the cure for English bacon, but you can do a search for Canadian bacon and you should come up with a lot of hits; or take a look at theses recipes:
http://www.susanminor.org/forums/showthread.php?t=311
http://www.susanminor.org/forums/showthread.php?t=319

This site may be useful. Manxman brought this site to the boards attention. It may provide you with the proper cure. It;s a PDF file so you will need Adobe Reader to download it.
http://www.britishmeatfoodservice.com/foodservice/pdfs/Bacon%20Week%20Download.pdf

Edited:
It also look like the English bacon is not trimmed as much as Canadian. So you may want to leave about 1/8" of fat.
This link may also be helpful;
http://www.lovebacon.info/documents/Bacon_cures_brochure_final_000.pdf

Also it looks like English bacon is cold smoke or not smoked at all, as Canadian bacon is can be hot smoked, and it is generally fully cooked.

[manxman]

Hi RobM and welcome to the forum.

British back bacon is pork loin and streaky bacon is pork belly, occasionally you may see "middle" bacon which is obviously the middle bit between the loin and the belly!

The websites below are the two that I use for my bacon and sausage supplies, both seem very good. I spoke the owner of the first one yesterday, Tim Weschenfelder, as I am currently upgrading my sausage making equipment and he was most helpful.

I am sure he would help if he can although quite what shipping costs to the US would be I have no idea, the other alternative is to buy some when next in the UK.

Over the past couple of years I have done a lot of bacon in my OBS , I have tried it smoked and unsmoked and much prefer smoked. Smoked bacon is always cold smoked and then either cooked under the cooker/oven grill or fried when required.

The second website has a good link for dry curing bacon although I do mine slightly differently.

I smoke for 8 hours and have mainly used oak although apple works well. Must admit I have had bacon in quite a few parts of the world and British bacon is one of the few food items that I look forward to coming home too!!  ;) :D

Hope this helps, let us know how you get on.  :D

http://www.weschenfelder.co.uk/index.php?cPath=47

http://www.sausagemaking.org/