Bacon Expert Guesses Cheap vs Expensive Bacon | Price Points | Epicurious

hi I'm Eli Kyra and I'm a bacon expert [Music] it looks like bacon and bacon B are streaky bacon or American bacon why we say American bacon it's kind of important because if you were to order bacon in any english-speaking country besides America you might get a complete different products the word bacon this means any fatty piece of pork that has been cured salted or smoked when meat makers go to purchase raw bellies for bacon making we have two grades that you can purchase it we have a and B it looks like bacon a is a grade B bacon and bacon B is a grade A bacon confusing we'll get through this great a bacon is usually center cut bacon it's the middle part of the belly it's the most desirable it's very even as you can see it has a fatty layer a lean layer a fatty layer and a lean layer that's the ideal bacon for production of what you would get in like a pre sliced package at a store when you say grade B bacon it just means that it's not as center or as uniform as the bacon it's the end it could be the end towards the shoulder or the end towards the ham you still usually get the four layers but it's just a little bit uneven harder for people to cook perfect and isn't exactly what people are picturing when they're ordering bacon the first thing I look for when I'm going to purchase bacon is to see if it's smoked over real Applewood or use liquid smoke if you look at the outside of the bacon you're gonna get a nice beautiful dark color on it you want to see that so the smoke actually came in contact with the outside of this bacon on this bacon over here if you look at the side of it you can tell that it's the same color as it is on the inside of the bacon that would make you think that it never actually came in contact with smoke when you receive your bellies there's two ways to start bacon production and carrying it bacon production and when you dry here it is when you just take very simple ingredients of salt nitrate a little bit of sugar and you put that directly onto the pork it takes about a week under cure so the salt penetrates the nitrate and the cure gets inside of it it makes a much more consistent bacon if you do a wet brine which looks like bacon B is you take water liquid smoke brown sugar some people put corn syrup in it and then what you do is you would take these bellies and you can actually see there's some holes that could be from bacon injectors so big needles you put inside of it and pump it for the liquid smoke and that bacon can directly go into an oven and then be cooked up just in steam never having touched a smokehouse whatsoever and then off to packaging the difference is bacon a will take about a week and bacon B could be done in about 15 seconds also with bacon a you would have to cook it all the way through to render it perfect all the moisture has been rendered out of it nice slowly chilled and sliced once you render this in your pan at home you're gonna most likely get less fat and less waste and on this bacon you're gonna lose all the extra fat and all the moisture in your pan you can pull it apart and see that it pretty much looks like raw bacon it's like raw belly you guys got that bacon a the second you pull it up god you smell it it smells like real smoke you can see it looks like a beautiful cooked piece of pork I mean that's smells so good I think I should try a piece good that out of the way real quick mmm yeah that's how you can tell it's already a quality bacon sorry should I not eat that let's go put them in a pan and see how they taste start it a nice hot pan see these are gonna shrink up rather quickly like it's the smoke alarms in this place so ready it smells so good all right we got them all cooked up you can see they're completely different they can be here stayed long it's nice it's what you picture as a bacon bacon a just shriveled up a little bit different it looks a little bit more rustic the streaks throughout the middle are darker on the outside the smoke is really obvious both of them look like beautiful bacon but now let's taste them and see what it's like I'm gonna start with bacon eh mmm perfect crunch yeah that's good that's not greasy it crumbles nicely it's got a good bite that bacon is delicious let's try this bacon over here that's really good bacon too though this Bacon's a little bit more greasy fairly smoky and on is definitely liquid smoke well that's kinda like the classic bacon the bacon you grew up eating I mean that's the bacon that I love on a BLT with white bread this is the bacon that I love cooking on the holiday weekends for my family has much more flavor more nuance to taste really delicious it has depth it makes you stop and think like oh this is a very high quality bacon it's a tricky one because center-cut can cost more in raw product but I'm still gonna put my money on bacon a here definitely took longer to produce it's definitely handmade great Bacon's I really hope I'm right here whoo oh my god I'm not even a comparison when you're shopping for American streaky bacon I prefer to go to a deli that we'll be able to slice the whole belly to order that makes the best quality bacon you can tell ask them to slice it as thick as you'd like if you're shopping for big and B if you're buying it off the counter then the pre shingle in a wrap look for that it's a organic or antibiotic-free bacon that at least you know it comes from a healthy happy pig turkey Bacon's to be totally honest I don't know all that much about turkey bacon this is the one product that I have never made first thing I think about turkeys don't have bellies right so how do you make a bacon out of it you essentially just makes sausage and then you set him in two forms smoke them or cook them in any which way and then you put them on a slicer and shingle them to make him look like bacon this is actually a pretty cool bacon a very awesome meat makers trick what they've done here is they have a mold that makes it look like I'm sitting on a smoked rack and then you can see we have two different colors which is a really cool trick this part is made from the dark meat and this part is usually the wider lean meat and when they're feeling it somehow they've created this process to fill the molds and it must like just separate it a little different keep it kind of like a meat loaf and then steam it or smoke it ah you can see it's like a little bit more coarser it seems like there's more lean turkey meat inside of here this one could have been you know wet brined again as you pull on it it's a little raw kind of looks good you know it has little chunks of meat inside of there but it's more like a sausage I kind of like it it's a little bit more rustic looking it's definitely not as process to look like bacon as that one is the people that love turkey bacon are the people that don't like pork or they're looking for what is a perceived healthier bacon but a little insider trading about turkey bacon is that since it is a sausage we can add as much fat as we want into these just be very careful when you're purchasing if you're really looking for a leaner turkey bacon that you look on the nutrition's on the back to be sure that you're not actually consuming a bacon that has actually higher fat content oh boy let's go get these into a pan and crisp them up and see how they taste and take an educated guess awesome they're crisped up these things are crazy-looking I can't wait to try them it looks like a perfect piece of bacon that little color Snow's pretty cool there's zero crunch not too salty tastes pretty fatty to me I wouldn't say that's a lot of lean I'm not even getting much smoke on it that's definitely sweet there's definitely corn syrup in there so process I'm going to assume there's also like probably phosphates or something to keep it in there citric acid or extend the shelf-life it's a unique product for sure this one looks cooler I think to me it's got a little different colors it looks like more chunk Kron believe definitely taste smoke it's actually got a pretty good chew to it this is great it's got good flavor I'd eat that the thing it is is I think they're great products it's just it's hard to cook it's hard to call them a bacon they're not all crunchy and melly but I think it's more of like a smoked poultry product in the shape of a bacon than it is an actual bacon which I guess that's what it is this is gonna be hard but I'm gonna go ahead and just guess I just think it would be extremely hard to get a technique that has separates the color you're taking dark meat you're taking lean meat you've got some flavor and it's cooked up so perfect and I don't know maybe that's the really maybe that one is the cheaper one I'm gonna go ahead and say turkey bacon a van I'm splitting hairs here please hope I'm right no way did I miss it don't like half see what I know who knows I wasn't even close I know I guess what I learned from this if something just looks a little more processed or just doesn't taste as delicious it's probably the cheaper one I guess when you're going out looking for turkey bacon just don't listen to me just a meat expert Canadian bacon it's like American bacon but friendlier and with better healthcare Canadian bacon and actual is more like a ham the true Canadian bacon when I think of Canadian bacon is bacon a over here it's actually the entire loin of the pig and it's cured in an entire whole piece very similar to a ham traditionally the really good ones are done in a wet brine that have tons of flavor in it bay black pepper sugar salt cure the loin is then put in the bride then it's held there for about a week that it's pulled out its hung and then it's smoked very slowly over Applewood or a hickory or some sort of hardwood until it's cooked all the way through as I said it was the loin of the pig this is the very back of the pig this is also the pork chop the streaky bacon if you were to hold this like this would come off of this part of the loin and then go down all the way underneath the belly it definitely smells like it has other you know aromatics in there you get black pepper that's a white pepper definitely no doubt about it real smoke yeah I'm excited to eat that Canadian bacon beet is more like what we now think of the Canadian bacon as this is actually a sausage you take ham meat other big chunks of lean pieces of the pig and you brine them and then you make a sausage emulsification then you fold in these big chunks of ham then you put it inside of a casing then you hang it up and smoke it just like a sausage then you chill it and then once it's done you strip the casing off the outside and so it looks like a Canadian bacon but to be honest with you the most traditional true Canadian bacon should be a whole piece of loin slow cured and smoked you can see it is more like a sausage you're getting air bubbles inside there that means that maybe the most vacation or the process wasn't exactly done perfect the advantage for a processor is that you can use all of the trim and all of the other parts of the pig to fully utilize it the drawback is is crafty meat makers can add ourself a little bit more fat to it I mean we could increase the fat on this thing up to 30 to 40 percent and you wouldn't even notice so yeah that's all you can see from here let's go cook it up and see how it tastes gorgeous so we have a bacon all cooked up here ready to go you can see that the loin bacon kind of squared up it kept its shape as a loin wood if you look at it kind of like that it just looks like a whole piece of lean meat connected together there's not like big fatty particles in between it on the outside you can see the colors different has definitely been touched with real smoke on the outside as did this one the outside is also browned up so that's a good sign that it was either dunked in liquid smoke or actually had smoke touching it you can see there's just different colors in there there's parts that are definitely pieces of ham and all through here then in between there you're getting like the fatty piece of sausage emulsified also smells really good though so let's try it I'm gonna start with a the loin in the traditional Canadian bacon they're what I really love about Canadian bacon is that its soap here right it's very very lean so you get the taste of the pork but this one definitely does have white pepper black pepper in the brine really beautiful apples smoked this took a nice long very gifted hand to produce this product I think it's very very good this one over here is beautiful not a whole lot of flavor not a lot of nuances through it and there's a little bit of sour in there so if you're eating it there's like a slit I would say maybe like a lactic acid and what people do when you make sausage you'll add like a little citric acid or you'll slightly ferment it to give it just giving it a little process so you can keep this on the Shelf maybe a little bit longer I wasn't really dry its burly a little salty judging that this is the whole loin of the pig it is one big piece of meat and you only get two off of every pig that alone should make the cost of making it a lot more expensive with a round bacon the sausage one here you could take all the parts of the legs a little bit of a trim the stuff that's not necessarily aleena name then you could put it into a sausage making the raw cost much lower I'm gonna have to say that this Canadian bacon is the more expensive [Music] hey you know this is the Canadian bacon that you'd want to serve to the Canadian Eve your family super duper lean so if you have somebody coming over that's worried about fat this is the bacon you'd want to serve to them this one is an awesome product you can just griddle those puppies up and put them on a sandwich top it with egg or put it hollandaise over the top of it it's an amazing product so if you're looking for a Canadian bacon you're gonna buy again remember the shape make sure it looks like the loin it's kind of a rectangle with a little bit of fat up on the top this one if you see it at the grocery store it could be in a shingle pack just like streaky bacon but it'll be round that's kind of like the full size that it's most likely processed a little bit more awesome these are really cool Bacon's this bacon on the right here is a UK English bacon is what we call it sometimes it's called Imperial bacon or royal bacon I love it so much because I feel like the English that's something very very smart they took the Canadian bacon right here which is the loin of the pig and then they kept the fat on and part of the streaky bacon on to the side so you're getting the best of both America and Canada absolutely the most simple and elemental of all the Bacon's this bacon is just cured so you add salt nitrate and then you keep it in refrigeration the entire time you actually don't cook it or smoke it whatsoever bacon B is definitely a very special bacon judging by the looks it looks like German Black Forest bacon or a Halpin Mountain ham bacon that they call Lambrecht shinken or northern Italian that they call SH Beck you can actually tell this is the exact same cut of bacon bacon B has been cured smoked and fully cooked and then this one is still raw undeniably smells like absolute heaven so the way that they process that is they would take the same kind of meat you would do the cure the same exact way and then you would press it into a form and judging by the beautiful outside color here I would assume that they produced what we call cool air that's when you take a big vat of sugar and you burn it then you add a little bit of water to it and then you submerge the entire ham yeah that's one that you should definitely try wrong on the outside you can see it's got really beautiful fresh herbs like rosemary black pepper some chili flake real real smoke it's got that very very heavy smoke I would assume that this piece of meat was smoked for maybe 48 hours very similar to the Canadian bacon on both of these Bacon's it's impossible to add extra additives to it so it's very raw very simple that's going to take these beautiful Bacon's and go put them inside of a pan and see what they taste like [Applause] awesome I just cooked them up they're back see it will start with the UK or the English bacon doesn't smell like smoke or anything it's just very very simple you know this bacon it's just so delicious and so simple super concentrated pork flavor a little bit of sugar on the outsider and the cure but honestly it's very elemental just beautiful pork griddled up I could eat a lot of that right now for sure let's try this guy let's try the fatty piece version the crunch is great oh it's got unbelievable amount of depth you got flavor coming for a smoke mmm the pork is amazing not too salty just melts in your mouth I mean this was really really good on so you could eat it definitely raw sliced or you could cook it up and you know eat it with your eggs or on a pasta is amazing both these are amazing I could eat an unbelievable amount of both of these this one is tricky they're both definitely wonderful Bacon's I'm sure none of them are cheap but I assume that this bacon with how hard it was to produce and that it is fully cooked is gonna be the more expensive of the two Bacon's but they're both amazing Bacon's I'm not wrong could be crazy yeah bacon a is a perfect example of simplicity and a bacon not overwhelming you know it's just a great bacon not too much going on just a way to start the day and this bacon on the left this is definitely an experienced bacon if you want to slice it raw for like an antipasto if you want to consume it uncooked in the morning with fruits that would be amazing way to use this bacon griddled up you're just raising the bar I mean this is a bacon you're gonna eat like you know once a year and you're gonna be like this is the greatest bacon memory of the year you go out shopping for bacon there's many different types my favorite ways to go talk to a butcher counter a deli person that's gonna slice the bacon to order for you and have the conversation of what you're looking for how thick you like your bacon if you like a Canadian bacon Imperial bacon or a streaky bacon but I do think it's best sliced to order by the pound but if you're out there and you're gonna buy pre-sliced bacon make sure you're looking for you know USDA Organic or antibiotic free make sure that you're getting the bacon that at least the pigs are let it really healthy and happy life [Music]

Channel: Epicurious

Views: 3,462,932

Rating: 4.8331366 out of 5

Keywords: bacon, expert, price points, bacon expert, olympia provisions, cheap, expensive, cheap vs expensive, cheap vs expensive bacon, cheap vs expensive food, cheap v expensive, cheap bacon, expensive bacon, experts, cheap expensive, how to make bacon, how bacon is made, best bacon, making bacon, tasting bacon, eating bacon, streaky bacon, canadian bacon, euro bacon, types of bacon, kinds of bacon, different bacon, eli cairo, turkey bacon, expert bacon, top bacon, bakon, epicurious

Id: yQtc9UG3mvc

Length: 18min 38sec (1118 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 29 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/bum-off]

This guys owns his own meat product company called Olympia Provisions. He’s on a YouTube series called It’s Alive with Brad sometimes. https://youtu.be/BHD3uqfbcRQ

[u/redmattyr]

I thoroughly enjoyed this