Breakfast Meat - Bacon - Pre-Poll Discussion

Before any further comment from me, please examine Bacon From Wikipedia to see just how broad this topic can be.

During the Breakfast Meats – Pre-Poll Explorationthese types were mentioned:

Bacon
“Canadian bacon”
Fake beef bacon,
American pork belly rashers.
quite a few different kinds of bacon besides American and Canadian.
Bacon (American, Canadian, Irish, or other)
Bacon (American)
Bacon (includes Canadian Bacon along with pork belly rashers)

Due to the heavy voting for “Bacon” in the “First Pass” Poll, I’m wondering how much of a breakdown we may need to get people’s preferences as specific as they may be.

Please contribute names of types of Bacon that you have eaten and enjoy. It’s not really a test for how many you can name but how many types you like.

Depending on the response to this thread, if any, we may see the need for yet another Breakfast Meats poll.

My own experience with Bacon has been limited to the relatively thin sliced packaged bacon I get at the supermarket, Canadian Bacon (of which I am no big fan), and some thicker sliced butcher cut with some of the rind left on (again not a big fan).

I like mine well done and almost burnt. No fat left uncooked.

I love bacon for any meal and on BLT’s and other sandwiches like cheeseburgers, and in salads. It’s hard to present bacon (as long as it’s been cooked) in a way I resist.

How about you and your experiences?

I take it that bacon doesn’t need much clarification. Bacon is bacon and all this other stuff ain’t. I can live with that.

Far as I’m concerned there’s “American” bacon and Canadian (although I don’t differentiate Canadian bacon much from a slice of ham). All that “back bacon,” “middle bacon,” and others are mysteries to me.

I like to coat my strips in flour before pan-frying. They come out crispy but not burnt every time, even if I forget them for a moment.

Mama put hers under the broiler in the oven and put paper towels under them to absorb the grease. I liked them that way. Brittle crisp.

When we went “camping” when I was in my teens, I could never get bacon to cook right over a fire in one of those Boy Scout skillets, but damn if the eggs weren’t great in the grease. That and those old canned biscuits Pillsbury had.

Bacon. Microwaved. Well done. (99% of my preferred use)

Bacon minced up and in recipes. (the rest of my preferred use)

Bacon julienned, seasoned with chili spices, sauteed until crisp, then used in breakfast burritos.

Oven-roasted bacon, Alton Brown style.

I like the odd lots, ends etc. sold in bulk of 2-4 pounds. We chop it into uniformly small pieces, cook out much of the grease and put it on pizza.

Englishers distinguish between three kinds of bacon

back, middle and streaky

what Americans call bacon is roughly the cheap, nasty stuff that we call streaky

I pined terribly for back bacon for about my first 15 years in the states but I have now learned to accept and even enjoy streaky

Can you tell us about back bacon? I’m curious. Never seen it, except on that Wikipedia page. Kinda looks like a miniature pork chop in that pic.

I’ve heard about lamb bacon but I haven’t been able to find any in a store.

Its not completely unlike american-style bacon, it just has MUCH less fat. It’s usually cut a little thicker but it doesn’t have to be.

People often say “Oh - so it’s like canadian bacon then?”…but it’s not. It’s bacon-shaped for a start.

Huh.

Wikipedia says that canadian bacon is back bacon.

Huh+1.

Another wikipedia page says

So, apparently, the phrase “canadian bacon” means different things to different americans (sometimes on the same wikipedia page!) and nothing at all to canadians.

The round, sliced ham-like product is what I know as Canadian bacon - and it’s nothing like back bacon.

I am confuseder than when I started.

I don’t know what Canadians you guys have been talking to, but we have regular strip bacon just like you have in the US. Sometimes it’s sugar-cured, or maple smoked, or hickory smoked, etc. but it’s pretty much the same thing as you have.

The whole “Canadian bacon” thing is some kind of American invention. We do have back bacon, but it’s not perfectly round; sometimes it is the “peameal” variety with a coating of cornmeal on the edges, but usually not.
As to Irish bacon, the bacon I had in Ireland when I was there was bland. NO flavour at all – just straight pig meat (brand name: Galtee).