UK vs USA Bacon! // why they're so different
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- čas přidán 18. 05. 2024
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Please weigh in on the great bacon debate below...!
♥
Most British people don't like American bacon because of the way it's cooked and covered in syrup and with pancakes. The cut isn't the issue.
Those McCormicks Bac'n Pieces contain NO actual bacon (hence the name). They're made from soy flour and (artificial) flavouring.
You can get also get collar bacon in the UK - usually only from butchers nowadays , it used to be dirt cheap when I was a child in the 1950s and was bought sliced for frying or in joints for boiling. I still buy bacon joints - they are cooked like a ham but are cheaper than ham - really good for soups, or sliced with parsley sauce.
I buy thick cut smoked & plain streaky bacon from my family butcher.
I am English & I cook it slowly in a cast iron skillet on a low heat, rendering it much of the fat. It is coloured to a beautiful darker colour & almost caramelised & slightly crisp on the outside & soft in the centre.
Absolutely beats traditional back bacon.
Thick dry cured home bacon from your local family butcher is definitely the superior bacon if cooked slowly
Ok so if you want crispy bacon in the UK, I have a tip for you....
Cook it till it's crispy!
Works for both streaky and back
😂😂😂😂👍😉
Streaky bacon is better than the imperial cut we have in the UK.
@@mr.kinkade2049 never heard of the imperial cut.
Crispy bacon happens with a longer cook at lower temps where the fat is allowed to drain away.
Try the cold oven technique. Start with a cold oven, place the rashers on crumpled tin foil to let the fat drain away. The bacon needs around 20 minutes with the over set to 180c. Should come out lovely and crispy.
Takes longer but true
When I was little (I am now 80), bacon was always sliced in a grocery shop. The grocer would have a whole side of bacon on the slicer which was turned with a big handle. So each slice, or rasher, would have both back and streaky and would be twice as long as you would buy today. It was only when bacon came sliced and packed that the back and streaky became separated for packing..
That's middle bacon? Don't see it around much these days.
And it always had bits of bone in.
I remember the chart on the counter showing the slice thickness against a number so one could ask for the thickness required, oh, and the separate counters and queues for bacon, cheese and deli (cooked meats) in Sainsbury with the pay kiosk at the back of the shop. No cross contamination in their shops.
Yep, that’s exactly how I remember it, always a bit concerned that the grocer might slice the tip of his thumb off! My choice was always the streakier end of the slice.
@@tonys1636 that takes me back. I remember our local grocer (this is in the UK) would also weigh out butter to order, patting it into shape with 2 wooden spatulas before wrapping it.
British bacon and gammon - 100 % superior. Sorry Seppos (I’m Aussie)
Left over fat in the pan? Cook the bacon with tomatoes and mushrooms, then throw in bread to get fried bread. Fry an egg too. HP sauce on the side.
Truckers tea (strong tea).
Perfection (maybe some baked beans too).
Oh God, bloody starving now
You would be welcome here any time. You've just described the perfect breakfast.
I have severe medical problems where I get no appetite and starve to death if I'm not careful.
You've just made me hungry.
I'm going to find a cafe.
Congratulations, you helped me survive another day.
This is not a joke.
At the kangaroo hoppet quite often come into contact with visiting Americans. They are surprised we can get bacon with the eye intact. They only get the fat and rind part with a little bit of meat.
Beans warmed up in bacon grease is amazing!
Septic "bacon" is crap (technical term). 100% UK or Aust option.
When in the States and tried to eat bacon, I would called it grenade bacon because when you put your fork into the rasher and it would explode. Everybody on the table would be able to enjoy it except me.
True!! It flies everywhere!
Socialist bacon, everyone gets equal amounts (whether they want it or not!!)
Fair enough but when they start dipping their solders in my fried egg, that's taking socialism too far.
It always appears more like jerky in films/TV. Eat it with your hands? What?
@@andrewcharles5575 Oh that's good. That would scare some US Americans, into not eating it, because they can't tell the difference between socialism and communism.
You don't ever need to apologise for your accent Kalyn, it's what makes you and mark's you out, NOT what mark's you down.
And “knife and fork” rather than “fork and knife” 😜
@@andyt8216 I've noticed that in the US very few people say, let alone understand, the word cutlery. I think flatware is the commonly used term over there.
@@ballyhigh11 My experience here in the US with my family, mainly Mom who was a dietician and also worked some in food service at several levels, is that the term cutlery is used for things which cut, plus the special forks employed in combination with carving knives. Silverware and flatware seemed to be used interchangeably for the eating utensils beside your plate.
Another difference is in animal welfare standards which are much higher in the UK than US.
There has been a bit of a backlash against Danish bacon here due to the factory farming methods used in Denmark which are viewed by many people as inhumane. The US also uses factory farming.
UK producers of bacon tend to raise their pigs in 'free range' conditions or better yet organic.
Personally I try and buy organic bacon for that reason and also nitrate free for health as it doesn't have the carcinogenic additives of processed bacon. It's more expensive though, so I only buy it when I see it on sale.
US bacon is frazzled. In the UK we have bacon flavoured crisps (chips) called Frazzles, they're really good.
unfortunately no bacon is involved, the "taste" is entirely artificial
@@Pippins666 Not the point though.
@@Pippins666 I. Know. 😐. If you read what I wrote it clearly says:
"bacon FLAVOURED crisps."
Really, do you think they grate cheese over your cheese and onion crisps? Prawns are in your prawn coctail?
Please explain to this American what you mean by frazzled? I’ve been to the UK, so I’m familiar with UK back bacon and of course American bacon which I’ve been eating all my life. But I’m not sure what you mean by frazzled. By the way, when my sister and I traveled to the UK we decided that UK bacon wasn’t our cup of tea. It was more like thin, sliced chewy ham than bacon. Each of us has our preconceptions of what bacon is supposed to be like and when it doesn’t meet those expectations we are just left with sad disappointment😆. But the Cumberland sausages …. amazing 🤩 . I really wish someone would export Cumberland sausages to the US. That and Caerffili cheese.
@@pjschmid2251 I'm curious to know too
Growing up in the UK in the 1960's the type of bacon you could get from a butcher was Collar, Middle, Back and Streaky. Collar bacon was the defacto cheap bacon not streaky. With pre packaging in supermarkets Middle, Back and Streaky became the norm and these cuts would have the rind on. Later in the 1960's came the Danish invasion of rindless back bacon, I well remember you would see the packaging stating it was rindless. I can't remember when middle cut bacon fell by the wayside, maybe sometime in the 1980's, to leave us where we are now with only rindless back bacon and streaky as the available options for cuts.
There is still a small amount of middle available, but a lot less after the cuts changed in about the early 90s and that's when collar/shoulder bacon disappeared too. I don't remember rindless bacon where I lived before the 70s.
Oh that is interesting. Only the other day I wondered where the rind was … and having to always cut it off.
It's pretty common in the UK to add other stuff to a bacon sandwich. Especially if you go to a roadside sandwich van or greasy spoon cafe. I used to have a 'full house' sandwich every Friday which was bacon, sausage, fired egg, black pudding, mushrooms and tomatoes between three slices of thick cut crusty bread.
I had 2 egg and bacon sarnies for breakfast this morning. ❤🐷👍
black pudding being the finest part of a pig ! 🤣
An easy way to start a proverbial "bun fight" is to ask what the "best" bacon sandwich would be...
-- Brown bread vs white bread vs "50-50" bread.
-- Sliced bread vs buns/baps.
-- Butter vs margarine vs dripping.
-- Grilled bacon vs fried bacon.
-- Tomato ketchup vs HP sauce.
Agree - bacon, lettuce and tomato (BLT) is a standard choice in the sandwich aisle of many supermarkets.
Egg, bacon and a slice of raw onion cut so thin its transparent with HP sauce. Yummy.
As an ex expert, (dismantled hundreds of sides of pork.) that's the best description I've seen to identify the difference between American and British choices in bacon.
I prefer UK-style bacon, but in Denmark, it is difficult to find bacon that isn't "belly cut." As a child, I was told that a lot of our food traditions here in Denmark have been shaped by our export of pork to the UK. I.e. traditionally we exported the better and choicier cuts to the UK and the rest of the world, and that traditional Danish food is centered on low quality cuts which were harder to sell on the international markets. Still, IMO, the UK style is juicier and tastier than the Danish/US style
UK used to do that with cars, the best ones were exported!
Danish bacon was always regarded as elite in as far as pre packed bacon went. Bacon had to be British or Danish, with lamb it had to be British or New Zealand and so forth. I guess they we're exporting all the back bacon for big money to the overseas wealthy and selling the belly to the local riff raff. I honestly will eat any pork
I miss Danish bacon
@@Phiyedough Go to any food market in Spain and see the amazing seafood. Almost all caught in UK waters by British trawlers. Go to any UK market and the seafood offering is pathetic!
You can it from Abigail's British Food.
A lot of supermarket UK bacon is packed with water, a 250g pack can be up to 60% water. Get the bacon from a butchers and it contains no added water but will be more expensive as it don't have water added to make the product look like its more. A 250g pack of UK bacon bought in a supermarket can be as little as 110g of meat when it's cooked as they sell the pack in 8 rashers per pack. IMO supermarket bacon works out dearer than that bought from a butchers when the water is removed from the supermarket bacon.
I buy cooking bacon as it's a lot cheaper than buying a pack with 8 rashers of water filled bacon sometimes the bits are small with a lot of fat which I render down to nothing and use the fat in other things I cook and sometimes there is very little fat as the bacon is more like gammon steaks with a little fat. I will use these large strips in a bacon and egg pie.
I like the taste of bacon but rarely bought it when I lived in UK for that very reason. It would shrink so much when you cooked it that it seemed a waste of money.
You really think the Butcher doesn't have a bucket of Brine and a syringe?? :) The Brine is injected first anyway before the Butcher buys the carcasses. Though Supermarkets do put more in
@Phiyedough I think you bought the wrong kind of bacon.
I'm lucky enough to have a local, independent butcher in the village. Their bacon doesn't shrink at all, doesn't expell that horrid white gunk that supermarket stuff often does, and tastes heavenly.
Does it cost more? Possibly. But because it doesn't shrink and because it's less processed I don't really care anyway.
Even in today's economic situation, it bothers me greatly when people consider cost a factor for stuff like this.
My monthly bills are about £1200. A few extra pence for really nice, healthier bacon? Rack it up!
You can't economise on pleasure.
There's a old saying here, "look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves."
My version is, "look after the pounds, and the pennies become utterly irrelevant."
My local uk butchers bacon has added water. He said that the dry cured version is too expensive for his customers to buy. I buy the dry cured
You need to buy dry cured bacon even from a butchers, if you can find one. Even supermarket dry cured doesn't contain water
In the US they dont cook bacon, they cremate it
Not true. Perhaps you should actually visit the U..S. and try it.. Just don't order it extra crispy.
@@nukemanmd mate i spent months in America and will probably move there as my mrs family are from there.
I love allot of things about America especially Colarado. But nowhere did i find Bacon, cheese, Bread or chocolate anywhere near what we would even tolerate anywhere in Britain or Europe.
Thise things in America are universally awful. So is about 70% of the sausage. The beef is allso not as good as Britain. Not bad but nowhere near Britain. Thats the perk of it raining everyday. Cows pretty much only eat grass and clover. Makes them super yummy.
But bread , cheese, chocolate and bacon just gave up trying to eat it and ate other things instead.
In Scotland we also have "Ayrshire Middle" bacon which is the 'back' and streaky (belly) in one slice
If you want proper bacon, go to your local butcher, if you have a “ proper butcher “ it will be sliced in front of you. Supermarket bacon has a very high water content.
Actually, unless the bacon is made by salt curing, they have to add brine (salted water) to it, even in a butchers. Only fully salt cured bacon (smoked or not) doesn't require adding water.
Hi Kalyn,
I think you missed Middle Bacon, a UK cut, I believe it is effectively the streaky joined to the back.
In general we are talking about rashers/slices of bacon, we do have bacon joints as well.
UK have both smoked and unsmoked, in London Unsmoked is often called Green or Greenback.
I prefer our (UK) Smoked Back Bacon, but will eat any.
The best bacon!
What about collar bacon and bacon chops.
@@user-gd9xf9zs9r Dingles tomorrow lad, three points or are they going to park the bus? Anyway what ever bacon, HP BROWN SAUCE!
@@user-gd9xf9zs9r And gammon!
@@b3564 three points I'm thinking.
Good afternoon, back in the 70's I learnt to bone, joint and rasher up sides of bacon. In addition to the back and streaky there were a number of other cuts available, that I have not seen for years. The shoulder end, as in your diagram was collar and hock, the hock being the part that had the upper part of the trotter. Between the gammon, which is shown as ham on your diagram, on the streaky side was a small joint called a flank, and between what is shown as loin was the oyster back and long back, between the ham and loin. My experience was from Waitrose and the branch I worked at did not do the other two cuts that I knew of, throughcut and bacon chops. Throughtcut was a single rasher with prie and streaky, a bacon chop was a thick cut piece of back bacon, like a gammon steak.
Brings back memories of decent butchers bacon, and all the cuts. I loved a bacon chop, the collar bacon. I have just got a kilo of bacon bits from my butcher for £1.25, so you probably know I'm a nose to tail gal, old school!
In the UK it would have been better to have consulted a pork butcher rather than the internet. British/Danish bacon consists of the loin and the belly i.e. Back and Streaky that will be sliced as a whole unit. It is then cut in half to provide Back bacon and Streaky bacon and originally there was a difference in price between the two, Streaky being the cheaper cut. The USDA is only an authority on bacon in US and nowhere else, in UK the FSA is the authority.
Crispy bacon is found in the now eclectic UK cooking and can be found crushed and sprinkled over vegetables
In the UK we do use pork belly as bacon because it is mostly fat with streaks of meat. We call this streaky bacon and it is used mainly for basting during roasting for example when cooking a roast turkey or roast chicken. We would never consider eating streaky bacon as it is not healthy to consume with so much fat. After roasting the streaky bacon is usually discarded. Back bacon is much meatier than streaky bacon and can be cooked to such an extent that it is crispy and snaps but this is very unusual and is not normally done. On visits to the USA I have tried to cut the fat out of the strips of bacon but it has always been futile because the basic production is different.
When I worked in Houston, the bacon was so awful I learned how to cure my own. Never looked back. But we do get American bacon, it’s called streaky bacon.
You said bacon sandwiches are bacon in bread and ‘not much else’ but in the UK we tend to butter the bead, which Americans don’t tend to do and we add either tomato or brown sauce to the bacon.
Buttering the bread for a bacon sandwich is very new. When I was a kid you might pour the bacon fat over the bread but that was it. And Victorians had a saying butter your bacon. meaning to spoil some thing with excess. equivalent to over egging a pudding.. And personally I think they were right.
As a Brit I never butter bread for a bacon sandwich. I use the bacon fat, juices. I do butter bread for everything else including peanut butter 😊
@@simonwatkins3236New?!, I'm 48, been doing it all my life, so did my dad and grandad.
@@scottneil1187 Same and I am nearly 60. I think it varies somewhat, on where you come from. I live in south east england but my parents were Irish imigrants. The Irish love butter on everything.
Back bacon and streaky.. smoked and unsmoked eat all😋
Interesting perspective, and great to see someone on YT going into some depth on a subject. Thanks.
It matters on the what the pigs are feed and space to move. Cuts are important but that's linked to what you use it for.
Add that that the US using steroids and other 'modifiers' to their animals to get more out of them, will definitely affect the flavour.
Just to help things along, in Scotland, you can get Ayrshire bacon. It's made up of both streaky and back bacon.
Good video. There is also 'middle cut' bacon in UK. This combines both loin, and belly in each slice. I used to eat 'back' bacon, (when fat was 'bad' for us) but now i prefer streaky bacon.
The idea of American bacon vs English bacon, I think is wrong. What Americans call bacon, we also just call bacon, it's the way it's teated which differs. In America they like their streaky bacon cut thinner and cooked until crispy, that's basically the difference.
No it's not. American bacon is taken from the belly of one breed of pig, while British bacon is taken from the loin of another breed, but with a little of the belly attached, to add more fat. They are different products. Cut and prepared from different parts of different animals. The equivalent of American bacon in the UK is called streaky bacon. (Canadian bacon is loin only.) In the US, the regulations state that 'The term "bacon" is used to describe the cured belly of a swine (hog) carcass. If meat from other portions of the carcass is used, the product name must identify the portions where the bacon comes from, e.g., "Pork Shoulder Bacon."'
@@Dionysos640She exactly that in the video!
@@stuartwhyte4959 And your point is? Kalyn also liked the comment that I replied to which contradicted the facts she had already demonstrated she knew about.
@@Dionysos640 Just because the USFDA deem bacon to be the "cured belly of a swine (hog)" (and as bacon goes back over 3500 years), does not mean that their description is the only valid one, Just like what they call cider in the US is simply fruit juice elsewhere, and an alcoholic beverage in other places. And Not all British bacon is taken from the Loin, it is more the pigs sides, going down to the belly centre, and simply folded while being cured for Middle Bacon (Which is best as offers more bacon in two different cuts) :) And from quick research it is not just one breed of pig, and can be the belly of any breed of pig, its just probably the main oscar meyer commercial stuff is probably from one preferred breed, as they know exactly how quickly they can go from piglet to bacon and what hormones/chemicals and foods to get them fattened up the quickest way possible for maximum product to profit ratio.
@@Dionysos640 if you show American bacon to an English person, it’s literally just streaky bacon. As for it being a different pig, We have lots of different pig breeds here, but it’s still just bacon. What special breed of American pig do you use?
I remember when we used get Sides of pig where we would bone, cut and slice and dice up to 30 sides a week, everything is now prepackaged and you don't know the quality.
My mum used to sometimes buy a bacon boiling joint which we would have with mashed potato, peas and parsley sauce. We never had bacon for breakfast but if we had a mixed grill for Saturday lunch it would include middle bacon, unsmoked.
Man, that takes me back. Cheap joint stewing in the pan to soften it, for hours. With taties and cabbage. It was well worth waiting for, mind.
@@blackbob3358Nothing stopping you doing it lad.
ONLY YESTERDAY I was Googling “how to do American bacon” because I knew it was more than simply grilling, couldn’t find a single thing to step by step explanation on how to recreate it . But YOU have now helped me thank you and bravo 👏🙏
In Australia we can get either back bacon, streaky bacon or whole bacon rashers which is the back and streaky still attached in one piece. This is how I prefer my bacon as it is he best of both cuts. As for soft or crispy, it's all in the cooking. My wife prefers crispy while I prefer soft. No problem, we just cook my wife's for a little longer. I have eaten bacon in the USA and their crispy style seemed very greasy and I was told that's because they deep fry it. When living in the UK I found their bacon is either smoked or salted. I made sure I bought the smoked as the salted version was way too salty for me.
Another informative video Lass! and just had a bacon, sausage and egg triple decker sandwich dripping in butter a couple of hours ago and loved it lol!
I'm an old school bacon butcher (when halves of cured and sometimes smoked pigs were sent to stores....pre the vacuum packed rubbish sopping wet with brine) there's other cuts of bacon that are now not really found in the uk.....longback, middlecut, collar, oyster cut etc. The rind is now removed from all cuts of rashers.....and the rashers are sliced so thin, in most cases, they disintegrate rapidly before they get anywhere near a frying pan
The Yank version appears to be streaky bacon, though with even more additives.
HFCS?
Back bacon and streaky bacon are both sold in the UK.
That US bacon is what we call streaky bacon. The most common bacon in UK is back bacon. UK bacon from a good local butcher with traceability is far better than US. Our welfare standards are higher, and we have more restrictions on additives, before and after slaughter.
Hi Kaylin. I can't believe you made a video about bacon without mentioning the word rasher. How did you do that?
In Ireland one of our traditional meals is bacon, cabbage and potatoes. Back bacon is boiled whole and cut into chops to be served with the vegetables. Pigs were quite commonly kept in the countryside up to the 1960s. In Autumn pigs were allowed to roam through orchards to eat the windfall apples. This gave the meat a distinctive apple flavour which was delicious. In modern times there is often an attempt made by cooks to re-create the flavour by adding apple sauce to the dish. Crispy bacon is, to me, simply burnt meat and quite tasteless.
I thought the same thing... 😂😂😂
To add to the debate: Brown sauce or Tomato Ketchup? For me it has to be Tomato Ketchup with the Brown sauce reserved for sausage sarnies.
Definitely ketchup for me - I basically eat things just for an excuse to have ketchup.
I'm the exact opposite, my rules are brown sauce on bacon, red sauce on sausage and if it's a bacon & sausage sandwich it's brown sauce because bacon has priority
Thank you Danny baker.
Egg yolk is much nicer than either😜
Egg n bacon, ketchup. Bacon, brown sauce. Sausage, mustard.
That was a really detailed dive into bacon (Mmmm.... :P )
Brit here. I usually buy streaky bacon, always unsmoked, and eat it either in a bacon sarni (sandwich) which for me has to be between buttered sliced bread rather than a bun, and eaten with a dash of ketchup, or chopped up and cooked with tinned tomatoes, onions, and a dash of tabasco as a pasta sauce. I also use it for covering meats being roasted in the oven.
Agree with everything, ms Skipper, BAR the bleeding tabasco. That's a criminal offence !
@@blackbob3358 😂😂
I'm a Brit and I generally use streaky bacon for sandwich/ bun but Back bacon for "Full English breakfast" without NITRATES. Friendly mention to our US cousins ; I believe crispy/burnt bacon has been linked to cancers of stomach and bowel.😮
In the south of England we traditionaly cook bacon for only frying it for 1-2 minuets where as in the North it is fried to a crispy 4-5 minuets.
Do you mean 'minutes'? A minuet is a dance!
@captaintorch983 sorry I'm dyslexic and don't know how to get spellchecker to work.
@captaintorch983 my wife told me how to spell that one.
@@robinboyes9675 Ha Ha! I always consulted my late wife over spelling matters. Now I have to use Google!
We share the same Christian name btw.
You left out “middle bacon”, which is the back and streaky parts of the side of bacon intact, without dividing it into the two sections. There is also “oyster bacon”, which is derived from the parts of the side towards the fore and hind leg joints: There ceases to be a distinction here between “back” and “streaky”. Before the advent of packet bacon, you would specify which type of bacon you wanted at the shop, and they would slice it for you to your required thickness.
So the answer is simple, there are different cuts of bacon, we have both in the UK, ‘Back bacon’ is the larger rasher that has a medallion & what we call ‘Streaky bacon’ is the thinner rasher.
There is also another rasher of bacon that can be bought that is called ‘Middle bacon’ which looks like a back bacon rasher with a tail of streaky bacon.
Middle bacon used to be popular in the UK but we don’t see it so much today.
Another very interesting video, the whole series has certainly been enlightening and I have certainly learnt from them. I'm British but have been to the States and tried the bacon there. Personally I like bacon either way, in fact I like crispy bacon inbetween bread slices, but the more usual British style in rolls and as part of an English breakfast. On a totally different topic, I don't know how you come up with the topics, but I enjoy them so please keep them coming. An Octogenerian subscriber.
Thank you so much for watching and I'm glad you're enjoying - there are plenty more like this coming your way, so stay tuned! I think you're right - both bacon types are good, just in different ways. Have a great weekend.
When I live in the US I would buy 'Canadian cut' from Target.
Pigs in blankets used to be served as part of the Christmas traditional dinner and still are - but, as they are just sausages with bacon wrapped around them, no need to just save them for Christmas - you can do them as part of a buffet or something!
In Australia you get both types, pan size is back bacon, streaky is belly but you can get rashers which is basically both.
Bacon is also popular on hamburgers and Pizza, an Aussie Pizza consists of bacon with an egg in the middle, very nice.
some times you can find middle cut bacon, rare collar cut, every expansive gammon.
Will have to look for that!
You will have to go to a real butchers to find collar bavon.@GirlGoneLondonofficial
I've not seen bacon with the rind on for years. Used to love breaking my teeth on a well cooked piece of rind 😅😅
@@tiggerwood8899I miss the rind! Loved to eat it if it was properly crispy.
British bacon is called Streaky bacon, or Back bacon. Streaky from the belly and back from the toes. As a 85 year old Briton, streaky has been my favourite since first taste , more than a few years ago. My mum n dad also liked streaky. And itd always be cooked by mum, how we liked it. Not crisp, but crunchy and still meaty. We wouldnt appreciate it burnt to all be crisp, but at least have a bit of chewy meat too.
You can get streaky bacon over here as easy as in the states. Does anyone remember, especially up north England, Rodey bacon ( spelling might be wrong ). Used to always be in the fridge in the corner shop, grocer would slice it on the meat slicer for you. Seem to remember it being the full piece of back and streaky bacon. Might just have been what we called it in our town.
Great video Kalyn. On my sole visit to the US my Step Mum advised me to avoid US bacon as she said it looked like our Streaky Bacon but was overly crisp, fatty with an odd taste. She did say that overall she loved US food with the exception of bacon over there.
The best is Lancashire bacon, which has the back and streaky in one, can't get it here so I have to put up with Ayreshire bacon which is similar but a bit thicker cut. Bacon butties, the best!!
That is Middle bacon
I love the 3rd type - smoked middle cut. It has the 'eye' of back bacon with the rest being streaky. Looking like a punctuation comma.
The bacon sandwich - 1 slice of buttered bread, 2 or 3 rashers of bacon, cooked to however you like it, with 4 slices of fresh tomato laid on top. Add a runny yolk fried egg to the top of that. Burst the egg so it runs between the tomato and bacon. Then top with another slice of buttered bread. Washed down with strong tea or fresh coffee.
Part of your 5 a day. 🍞🧈🥓🍅🍳🧈🍞☕
As an Australian I enjoy both styles of bacon, however, whichever you choose I love the rind still attached. I believe that it adds greatly to the flavour and adds to the variety of textures.
You can buy both streaky and back bacon in the UK pretty much everywhere (just as how you can get both ham and gammon, smoked and unsmoked). Its partially a matter of taste/preference and partially a matter of suitability for the dish being prepared. For example, back bacon is not going to work for pigs in blankets but if you want a juicy BLT sandwich you're probably better off with back. Personally, if having a plain buttered bacon roll, I like crispy streaky bacon but if I'm having a full cooked breakfast I like back. (Either way, always need it to be cooked properly though - its always horrifying when someone seems to have decided to treat it like blue steak.) As for the difference between European streaky and US-style, at least part of the reason can be chalked up to international bans on ractopamine feed which the US uses - making pigs plumper but exponentially more unhealthy.
I am a Scot, and I love my bacon. I remember our Sunday Breakfasts consisted of Lorne Sausage (Square Scottish Sausage) Several pieces of Back Bacon, three Tomatao halves, two fried eggs, Black Pudding White Pudding, Tatties, Baked Beans (It had to be Heinz Baked Beans to the English Recipe) and a wee bit of Haggis. When In England, we had the full English Breakfast, at E Pelici's at Bethnel Green. That was pure heaven. In 1961 we migrated to Australia, and although now "*DOWN UNDER* the routine was continued. In 2015, I visited my sister in California. I had not seen her for over 25 years. She contacted me to say she was dying of Cancer and did not have long to live. She rang me on the Sunday and by Wednesday, I was on a plane to California. My sister was being looked after at home by a nurse at home. When I arrived, it was breakfast time. Her nurse asked me if I could like some Scrambled Eggs and bacon for breakie, and I jumped at the chance, but when the breakie hit the table, the bacon looked like it had been through a Prisoner of War camp. It looked cremated. I put it into my mouth and it shattered like glass. There was no taste to it and what was left of the "SHARDS" of bacon chad more grease on it than the sump of my car.
This is a major contribution to bacon scholarship. I learned lots. Applause!
Specfacularly well organised and presrnted clip - was there a ton of woirk here?
I'm vegetarian - I miss the pigstrips, but so it goes.
For UK bacon sandwiches we have the following:
Bacon sandwich
Bacon and egg
Bacon and tomatoe
sausage bacon and Egg
Not forgetting Bacon sausage egg tomatoe and black pudding sandwich in some areas.
In the Uk, there’s also middle bacon, which is the back and streaky joined together. As a child, we would get the rubbishy fatty streaky bit and mum would save the meaty back for my father, it being the “ choicest cut”
We buy Belly Pork which is cut quite thick and can be Grilled or cooked in the oven.
I am in Australia, which in some ways is the cultural love-child of the UK (dominant and older influences through immigration) and the US (newer and more superficial influences via the media). But not with bacon, it seems...
I can just remember the time when bacon rashers (slices) were sold sliced to order from the whole side of bacon - I'm 65. In those circumstances you ALWAYS got both the loin and the belly together. Thus there was not a difference in cost between the loin cut and the belly cut, because they were always sold together - and generally they still are, although now they are nearly always sold pre-sliced. They are shaped roughly like a comma or an apostrophe (or a 9 or a 6, you get the idea) with a long wiggly tail.
What DID (and does still) make a huge difference in popularity was that *no-one* wanted bacon cut too close to the head of the beast, or the tail - in those circumstances the "best bit" - the meatiest bit from the loin - was just missing. The choicest rashers of bacon were (and still are) therefore called "middle cut" which is pretty self-explanatory. A nice oval of loin meat and a nice crisp tail piece. Together.
What has happened in the last 20 years or so is that there has been a general movement against saturated fat, and so now you can always find bacon with the tail cut off completely - you just choose the meaty bit from the loin (which is called "short-cut" bacon). Without the fat from the "tail" It is flavourless and chewy (a bit like fried ham), but people are making a health choice, I guess.
Finally, what you can now buy if you really look for it is streaky bacon a bit like the UK version you mention. I buy it in Costco (so in huge amounts), and it is marked "US style", although it is a fair bit thicker than the wafer-thin US bacon you showed.
I believe it's because, like Australia, American white history, culture only goes back a few hundred years . Where as British goes back thousands, and some of it stayed influencing current culture.
When we go back before colonial days, it's indigenous .
Bacon is life, any bacon tbh, but mostly use streaky for wrapping other meat and back bacon for fry-ups.
The smell of cooking bacon is alluring, just thinking about it makes me want to eat it.
Best cooked in cast-iron skillet imo
Oh look it's lunchtime, guess what?
Oooh, have never tried it in cast iron. What's on the lunch menu for you today?
@@GirlGoneLondonofficial BLT for lunch, steak for dinner :P
Bacon (streaky) wrapped Hot dogs, into a deep fat fryer till the bacon is crispy are great. I make it for my son and I, occasionally.
Never mind streaky OR back just get middle bacon. 3 slice in a buttered roll with a bit of brown sauce. Heavenly.
that streaky stuff is just for laying on the outside of a turkey your roasting
Interesting. I would say that in NZ we find middle bacon and streaky bacon taking the same amount of space as each other in supermarkets. However, as a general rule, I would say that streaky bacon tends to be the main type found on breakfast menus in cafes and restaurants rather than other types of bacon.
I thought I saw someone in the US buy a bagel from a Jewish bakery with bacon and eggs, cheese on it with British style bacon.
You do know that pork is forbidden to Jews.
So? That's business. The money is kosher.
Smoked pork bellies is the way to go. Anything else is just delicious pork.
🥓
We used to have a bacon festival in Savannah every year and there were so many ways to prepare bacon. Candied bacon, smoked bacon, chocolate covered bacon and alcohol infused bacon for starters.
When I was young I cooked bacon in a frying pan but now I put it on a slotted roaster pan and cook it in the oven. 25 minutes in the oven @ 425° and it's perfect every time, the grease drains down into the pan, and the bacon is flat.
You mentioned that different breeds of pig could result in UK vs US differences. I would suggest that differences in feed have a greater effect on flavour and texture than breed. In particular the reliance on maize in the US will give a softer fat than the mix of peas and other grains in UK pig rations. Pigs that are fed on mast (usually beech and oak) will have even firmer and more flavoursome fat, and it is possible to find this premium bacon in the UK in certain areas.
Nevermind the chemical crap they're pumping into the poor animals.
Here in Ireland, there is a phrase called "Being on the pigs back" which means you are doing very well for yourself. I often wondered where that phrase came from and now I feel I might know!
I have had the Full American breakfast many times on my very plentiful visits to the US. I far prefer UK bacon though. Both streaky and back.
I'm originally from South Africa and now live in the UK. I haven't researched the differences between the two countries bacon's but they appear to be similar with the exception of saltiness. First time I had British bacon I was shocked at how salty it was.
Such a rasher-nal topic for a video. Clearly didn't have porkies going into it.
Definitely prefer back bacon to streaky bacon, but streaky does work better on a burger.
You know, I spent the whole video wondering how I was going to fit the puns in....should have called you! ;)
@@GirlGoneLondonofficial As a kid my preferred crisp butty was with pickled onion flavour monster munch, if it helps.
You can actually get lamb bacon as well. Not easy to find but I got my local butcher to get some specially. Took about 10 days to make and it was quite expensive, but it was damn good!
as a kid i grew up with middle-cut bacon which was green (unsmoked) the middle cut has both some belly and loin and the skin (rind is attached). Over time and as an adult i discovered Back bacon, streaky bacon and smoked bacon. Also i discovered "french bacon" from France dry cured back bacon, and some other bacons popular in Spain, Italy and Germany. there were many similarities between them all, with the French dry cure being really good. Last year I was able to Visit the USA (new York) for the first time, i took the culinary challenge of eating some American bacon! very crispy a little salty and that was it. We have had a resurgence of people experimenting with different cures, dry wet, molasses and other strange variations, but at the end of the day, a good dry cured British bacon smoked or not will carry the day always.
I love my bacon crispy, and dry cured bacon is better than wet cured bacon.
The butchers on my local market will sell me strips of smoked belly bacon like you get in the US, I like to use it for certain things like bacon topping for a cheeseburger or to crush up into salads and such, it’s even good to cook into strips just to eat as a snack since I don’t like biltong.
Bacon, Lettice & Tomato is fairly popular in the UK as well. If you go to a Tesco Express at lunch time, you should find them in stock. I sometimes have it for lunch. I have other things as well, but that is one of the regular options I choose.
Yes, definitely - researching this now for my UK vs USA sandwich video! Thanks for watching!
Yeah I think its a new thing in the UK from the US
@@lemdixon01you've been able to buy BLT's for years 😂
@@parshakamarsh okay 👍... by the way nice haircut, Frank Zapper back and sides.
Pretty much every supermarket (and Boots) which carries a reasonable range of pre-packed chilled sandwiches has BLT (Bacon, Lettice & Tomato). Even Aldi, which has fewer options, has BLT. IIRC, one who offers a pre-packed "Selection" triple pack includes one BLT. I was getting them from the Tesco Express near the office in 2015, but IIRC Sainsbury's were selling them earlier.
AFAICT, chill-cabinets full of 'fresh' pre-packed sandwiches is not common in the USA. They are missing out on the "meal-deal"! (watch "Lunchtime Lover" czcams.com/video/qJXnkAVxOZA/video.html by the Brett Domino trio for their take on it).
Best Wishes. ☮
First off, thanks for a genuinely informative video. On our first visit to the US the breakfast diner experience was such a disappointment, especially as the diner was a local favourite. Now I understand the reason. Also, the class thing in the UK. I come from Northern Ireland which has a lot of farming and even as a child back bacon was pretty much the default so when I worked in London I was surprised by the English fondness for streaky bacon and now I understand why, and why back bacon has become more common there in recent years 👍
BLT sandwich is also served here in the U.K..I find crispy Streaky Bacon too salty so I opt for Back Bacon plain or Smoked, if it is available I will opt for Oakwood smoked there is nothing more ideal than savouriong that flavour!
We have both in UK we call the meaty one back bacon and the thin one streaky bacon I love streaky bacon crispy, it all comes from a pig so if you have a pig you have it all
worst thing to happen in Australia regarding bacon is the US cooking shows. People are now requesting crispy bacon. As mentioned, in the video, the US cut cooks up crispy. It's virtually impossible to crispen up back bacon that we use
Bizzarly,
And I don't understand the science,
But fry it with a thin layer of water in the pan at the start
I worked in usa lot and one few thing I hat is us bacon but what you say maks lot of sense I do backon in microwave 2 min perfect
Canadian here.
We have both types here, belly bacon is softer smoked/flavoured with maple. Back bacon is usually cured and rolled in coarse cornmeal and is referred to as peameal bacon. So once again we stand astride the British/Americans divide, fun eh?
I prefer Aussie bacon since I have traveled down under. It is like a combo of the two.
I have eaten streaky and back bacon, smoked and unsmoked. I prefer unsmoked back bacon.
The best bacon I ever had was Dutchy Originals thick cut, but it was expensive.
What you are calling traditional British bacon is not traditional British bacon that is Dutch style bacon. British traditional cuts are middle bacon(back bacon and streaky still connected) and shoulder bacon
If you go to a proper butcher rather than a supermarket you can often get through cut bacon that combines the back with the streaky part all in one big rasher.
Also not all British bacon is back bacon. You can get collar bacon which is usually cheaper and has more fat through it but tasty. It used to be the bacon you always got in greasy spoon cafes. Not so prevalent these days though.
I’ve never seen gammon in the USA. Maybe I’ve just missed it though. I like a gammon steak or a nice gammon joint don’t you?
When I was in the US I saw bacon sold in the supermarket being sold in cardboard boxes like cornflakes, not even need refridgerating.
I would never say that American bacon is bad. I love pork belly in pretty much any form.
I am fortunate to have tried both, and they both have great quality's :) funny moment in UK in Windsor where I work from time to time and some American tourists where in Wenzel's looking for lunch before they visited the Castle. I heard the husband say to his wife look at that what is a bacon roll? as I love when I bump into people from abroad I made my order for a baguette and also ordered a bacon roll with brown sauce as extra, then turned around and gave to the husband and explained the difference between UK and USA and what a bacon roll was, he was very took back and tried it and loved it :)
Something thay wasn’t covered in the video, but which surprised me when I first visited America, is that it seems common to have maple syrup with bacon. Typically a hot vat of maple syrup with a ladle is right next to that crispy bacon at a breakfast buffet.
Ideal for diabetics, by the sound of it.
Yes & also served with strawberries I have discovered on many visits.....I just can't get my head around that one!!
Hi no need to question how it's cooked or even if it's cooked raw unsmoked bacon is delicious and mostly safe to eat as long as it was farmed here in the UK and as for cooked from pink to extra crisp is jus fine
In the UK, there are 3 types of bacon! Back, Streaky (USA equivalent) and Whole bacon which is Back and streaky still attached as it comes off the pig, usually only available from good butchers not supermarkets!
I buy whole rashers from the local butcher - smoked middle it's called
Never been to the USA. However, I prefer extremely well cooked streaky bacon so I would love your bacon. My favourite café (sadly closed now) used to see me walking up the seafront promenade and put on my bacon so that it wouldn’t take so long to get crispy once I arrived!
Your pic is of two different cuts. We have streaky here too. Its a different part of the pig
Why am I currently craving a well done bacon sandwich with HP Sauce?🤤
Roses are red,
violets are blue,
poetry's hard,
bacon.
I was brought up in the English countryside in the middle of the last century. Market stalls selling local produce were well used, today these stalls are rare - specialist Markets called Farmers Markets are as near as you can get. The Farmers Markets sell roughly the same produce but the presentation is very different. Bacon is a splendid example of the similarity and difference. There used to be 3 types, long back, short back and streaky. In modern times Long back has become rare now. Short back is just called Back and the other half of the long back rasher is, as you know, called streaky bacon in England and just plain Bacon in North America. The naming of parts and presentation of pig meat varies across the United Kingdom. In Wales I have been blessed to have been fed Long Back and Laver bread cooked by an Aga stove. In Cornwall the preparation of the Laver is a bit different and it’s not so good with any type of Bacon, but it goes well with Hogs pudding.
What you call British/Canadian bacon was actually first created in Waterford Ireland by Henry Denny, before him bacon was thick & soaked in a brine so he cut thinner strips & cured the strips in a dry salt rub creating what today we call rashers.