Back bacon, as opposed to American "streaky" bacon. Stunningly crisp skin, perfectly cooked breast and leg, and a flavorful gravy in one fell swoop. Eat turkey bacon and you can cut those numbers in half, but you’ll cut taste too, our tests showed. Some comments may be held for manual review. We tasted our way through nationally available supermarket brands to find our favorites, from thick-cut and sweet to paper-thin with a salty punch. Personalized health review for Falls Brand Thick Sliced Bacon: 60 calories, nutrition grade (C plus), problematic ingredients, and more. Build & Buy Car Buying Service © 2020 www.desmoinesregister.com. "I'm happy he chose us with his expertise and I'm glad he picked the old-fashioned way of doing the curing process," said Vande Rose Farms' general manager, Jordan Jurgens, 30. That's why Vande Rose Farms in Iowa Falls, a marketing company that specializes in heritage breed Duroc pork products, was chosen as making the best bacon in the country by America's Bacon Critic. That's why Vande Rose Farms in Iowa Falls, a marketing company that specializes in heritage breed Duroc pork products, was chosen as making the best bacon in the country by America's Bacon … Chocolate-covered bacon, bacon martinis, bacon ice cream, bacon-of-the-month clubs—Is there any doubt that bacon is beloved? Some HTML is OK: link, strong, em. There's a lot to consider—the cut and thickness of the pork, the curing process (or lack thereof), the type of smoke that's used, and the effect of added flavoring agents. To find the best bacon for each palate, I had every taster describe their ideal bacon in writing before they tasted any bacon to get a sense of their frames of reference. All rights reserved. We reserve the right to delete off-topic or inflammatory comments. That's because our cured-and-smoked strips of bacon are made from fatty pork belly, where Canadian, Australian, and British styles of bacon are made with lean pork loin (with or without the fatback attached) and often completely unsmoked. Bacon made without nitrates will have a more distinctly "porky" flavor as opposed to "bacony.". Even adjusted for inflation, that's the highest it's ever been by a significant margin. Sugar is almost always added during this phase as well. Sweet and porky, Wellshire is a good alternative for people who prefer their bacon on the thin side, with a less smoke-forward flavor. Some bacons boast of thicker slices, and they have a serving size of one slice instead of two. Keep it traditional with this sage and sausage dressing. This last method, a process called "pumping," is the quick and dirty way of making bacon, and it's how most inexpensive supermarket bacons are made. There's the intoxicating smell; that smoky, fatty, salty, porky-sweet flavor; the contrast of pliable, tender meat and shatteringly crisp edges. (In general, you can keep opened bacon in a refrigerator for up to a week.). That's right. Comments can take a minute to appear—please be patient! If you're the kind of person who likes your bacon to pack a sodium punch, this is the option for you. The slices are a bit thinner, but "nicely pliant" with a fruity, satisfying flavor. And no antibiotics or growth hormones are found in these pigs. Our tasters sampled bacons in different orders to mitigate the effects of palate fatigue. The turkey bacons, cheaper but lower rated than the rest, were uniform slices of seemingly re-formed meat. There is, however, an easy way to identify pumped bacon if you prefer to avoid it: They all contain ascorbate or sodium erythorbate in the ingredients list, chemicals the USDA mandates for safety reasons.