The most important part of preparing meat and cooking it, is knowing precisely what the cuts of meat are and how they affect the cooking results. Meats like beef and pork are two of the most popular for baking, sauté. braising, broiling and grilling.
What is Beef Bacon?
To know what beef bacon is and why it’s a good choice, it’s necessary to understand the beef sections from which it is cut.
Beef bacon or as it is sometimes referred to, the pastrami cut, is found just beneath the short ribs and in between the sections of brisket and flank. Visually it the belly cut or more commonly, the short plate.
Generally, beef bacon offers the flavor of beef with a subtle salty and smoky pungency. It takes approximately ten hours to cure beef bacon to give it the meaty and smoky nuances popular with foodies.
Center Cut Bacon
Golfers love to use the term “center cut” when a precise putt or a drive goes straight down the middle. Thus, center cut in terms of meat sections also refers to the middle part of the beef or pork belly. The purpose of trimming and cutting away fatty portions is to create smaller, very lean bacon segments.
The process in which beef bacon is prepared is to soak the beef plate in a salty brine known as a “wet cure” with special curing salts, sugar and other spices and herbs like mustard seed, black peppercorns, allspice, red pepper flakes and herbs like dill weed, garlic and bay leaf. Depending on personal preferences, cinnamon, cumin and chili powder may also be added to create a signature brine flavor to enhance the meat.
Then, the meat is cured and tumbled for the first four hours of the curing process to ensure fullest flavor. Finally, it goes into a smoker where it hangs until the meat has a rich, smoked bacon flavor.
Once it has been cured and smoked, beef bacon can be used in many recipes. Grilled beef bacon takes on the flavor of barbecued meat and makes a tasty treat when added to blue cheese cole slaw or wrap other grilled meats like beef kebabs or shrimp in beef bacon. Grilled beef bacon crumbled is a great garnish for salads.
What Is Pork Bacon?
As its name implies, pork bacon comes from the underside of the pig’s spare ribs. It is also cured and smoked like beef bacon although the spices and herbs in the curing process may be different.
For example, the spices for curing pork bacon include salt, brown and white sugar, black peppercorns, paprika, nitrates, juniper berries and coriander seed. It is placed in a smoker to finish the process.
Types of Pork Bacon
There are actually two types of pork bacon. The most common is side bacon cut from the side of the pig. It has long white striations of fat ribbons and stripes of pork rind.
The other type of bacon is back bacon. It has a texture like ham and comes from the loin in the center of the pig’s back. The best example of back bacon is what is sold in the U.S. as “Canadian” bacon.
Side bacon should be grilled at low temperatures to avoid losing the curing nitrates that occurs when bacon is prepared at high temperatures, such as microwaving it.
Back bacon can also be grilled but for s shorter period of time since it has less fat content. Back bacon is ideal as barbecue wraps with veggies and seafood like crab, lobster and shrimp. Nothing says heaven like a juicy beef tenderloin wrapped in center cut beef or pork bacon fresh from the grill.
Canadian Bacon
Canadians don’t refer to the pre-sliced and unsliced, lean pink back bacon as Canadian. The only reason it is called “Canadian” bacon is because it was originally imported from Toronto to New York City at Delmonico’s Restaurant where it was first served. It was presented using back bacon Canadians “peameal bacon,” and served atop a toasted English muffin, crowned with poached eggs and Hollandaise sauce.
This became the famous “Eggs Benedict,” so named for a retired Wall Street stock broker, Lemuel Benedict, in 1894 who ordered the combination at the Waldorf Hotel.
Jowl Bacon
The jowl of a pig or cow is the fleshy, drooping lower part of the cheek or neck. It can be cured and smoked, depending on how it will be served. In the U.S. it is called jowl bacon according to the method used to cut and trim it.
The similarity of jowl bacon to side bacon is due to tender meat ribbons between the white stripes of fat. However, jowl bacon is not as uniform in texture as side bacon. Though the layers are larger, there are fewer lawyers that contain fat and meat. However, jowl bacon is more flavorful and has a silky texture ideal for recipes.
Beef Bacon vs Pork Bacon
In the debate of beef bacon vs pork bacon, there are several differences to consider.
Although, the curing and smoking processes are similar, the differences between beef bacon and pork bacon begin with bacon texture and fat content. Other differences between beef bacon vs pork bacon include:
. Flavor
. Cooking temperatures
. Fat content
. Price
The current conundrum for bacon lovers is cost. According to the U.S. Consumer Price Index in November 2021, beef prices are hardest hit by inflation and are up 20.1%, while pork prices have increased 14.1%.
Pork and beef bacon cost approximately $6/lb. The average price for jowl bacon averages under $4/lb. The average price for 500 grams of Canadian bacon is $8.99/lb. which is also the cost for a 17 oz. package of center cut bacon.
Pork side bacon has 336% more saturated fat than beef bacon that has 32g of saturated fat per 100 grams. Beef back bacon has 7.3g of saturated fat. Two slices of pork jowl bacon contains 36 grams of fat.
In terms of nutrition, consumers avoid saturated fats, high salt and sugar content as well as high levels of simple carbohydrates. As a nutritional example, three bacon strips, hickory smoked has a total of 120 calories, 9 grams fat of which 3.8 grams are saturated fat, 30 mg of cholesterol, 7.5 grams of protein, and 435 mg sodium.