Good Food Blog

Save our bacon

Posted at 12:02PM, 14 November 2008 by Graham Holliday - Blogger

Looks like Jamie's angry again, but he's not ticking off the local headmistress over Turkey Twizzlers and chips or battery farmed chickens. This time around it's bacon. The celebrity chef is set to go to war against cheap imports of pork in a new Channel 4 show called Jamie Saves Our Bacon. British farmers are hard hit by the cheap imports and it's the standards Jamie is concerned about,

"Seventy per cent of the pork we import is from countries with lower welfare standards than ours and would have been illegal to produce here."

This battle for bacon is no new fad. Just last week Gordon Brown stepped up to defend the British rasher when he said "we all know British bacon is best". We've also had the serious sounding British Bacon Education Week, along with the celebrity chef Save our Bacon campaign instigated by the unlikely sounding British Pig Executive and backed by Waitrose in February this year.

Regardless of cheap imports, the lesson is pretty simple; look at the packaging. If your bacon comes from Britain, it will say so on the packet. However, just because you buy British doesn't mean you won't suffer the scourge of "white scum".

Open quotationMore often than not, it's so pumped full of water you're left with this unsightly wan egg white scumClose quotation

This is my biggest beef with bacon wherever it comes from. More often than not, it's so pumped full of water you're left with this unsightly wan egg white scum sitting atop your slice of smoked back supermarket best. Four years ago I did a whistle stop breakfast tour of Scottish B&Bs and found the scum surfacing at all but one of the tables. Unfortunately, the one scumless spot closed soon after.

So, with farmers under threat, scum circulating the supermarkets, quality at a premium and more difficult to find than ever before, where exactly do you buy your British bacon? And no scum please...

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Comments

  • Binder photo lynnefoster
    16 November 2008, 4:44PM

    lynnefoster

    Open QuoteKnow what you mean about the white scum - I hate it. I find I have to get bacon from our local butcher to avoid it and failing that the Tesco Finest (I think it's called) has less than the rest.

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  • Binder photo BRENDA
    17 November 2008, 12:03AM

    BRENDA

    Open Quotei hate cheap bacon i bought organic bacon from tesco but it was £3.50 for about five slices and was not really all that different in taste although i did not have the white scum maybe if british bacon was more reasonablly priced people would be more inclined to buy it

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  • Binder photo Julia
    17 November 2008, 11:25AM

    Julia

    Open QuoteI support my local butcher and his bacon is always good, he rears most of the animals too so I know they are treated well - I also find it srinks less than the supermarket stuff.

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  • Binder photo Penny
    17 November 2008, 10:28PM

    Penny

    Open QuoteWe are luckly here in mid Wales our local bacon comes from just a few miles up the road. Pork with a tast that you thought had long been unobtainable and bacon, from streaky to gammon, fabulous flavour and NO SCUM!!

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  • Binder photo eclectic foodie
    18 November 2008, 8:22PM

    eclectic foodie

    Open QuoteSurely the lesson here again, like all meat, is to buy British and buy quality so you don't get the white scum. If that means eating less meat then so be it. It is well known that pig welfare standards are lower in Europe, so I am glad that Jamie is campaigning on this and hopefully he will make people think again about buying Danish bacon or such like...

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  • Binder photo James
    18 November 2008, 10:25PM

    James

    Open Quotehttp://www.meadowshomefarm.co.uk/ They dry cure their own from their Berkshire/ Gloucester old spot cross pigs. I went behind the scenes one day just at the right time as Mick (the farmer) was curing it - a mixture of salt and preservative, then it's vacpacced to allow it to cure, the cure is removed and it's sliced on their old machine that looks similar to a sewing machine. And if you order in advance they cut it to the thickness you like.

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  • Binder photo James
    18 November 2008, 10:26PM

    James

    Open QuoteOh yes - brown sugar - that's the other ingredient in the cure.

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  • Binder photo Tracinda
    19 November 2008, 9:43PM

    Tracinda

    Open QuoteThe white scum that you see when cooking bacon is protein being released, or so I was taught. You see the same thing when pan frying some kinds of fish too, such as salmon steak or chunky white fish. I seem to remember being told by a knowledgeable cook that once you start seeing that white scum, then you have overcooked your fish/bacon as the protein is being released from it. I don't think the white scum on bacon, therefore, is anything to do with quality, probably more to do with how it's cured. And I totally agree with buying British bacon over imported, although most of the stuff from supermarkets is full of water. Farm shops are a better source, aren't as expensive as a lot of people think they are, and locally reared and cured meat will always taste better than the over-packaged and over-traveled supermarket bought meat.

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  • Binder photo Nicola
    28 November 2008, 10:41AM

    Nicola

    Open QuoteWhen I was younger all the adverts on British TV were for Danish bacon.

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  • Binder photo Kelvin
    28 December 2008, 11:31AM

    Kelvin

    Open QuotePardon my ignorance but why do they put the water in in the first place surely they know it degrades a great product limiting sales.

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  • Binder photo Mr Pig
    13 January 2009, 3:57PM

    Mr Pig

    Open QuoteKelvin It's the same as everything else in the mass market sector - it's cheap and it's quick! Dry-curing bacon is slow, labour intensive and much more expensive. Supermarkets get away with selling rubbish because most people don't seem to know any better or care.

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  • Binder photo caladh
    14 March 2009, 11:38AM

    caladh

    Open QuoteI'm an expat living in Holland. When I buy bacon here there's no scum in the pan. When I buy bacon in UK always scum. It seems to me that it's the seller who allows the scum source to be added! It doesn't matter here where the bacon comes from, dutch, Danish, German etc. you just don't get the scum. I like UK bacon but hate the scum: is there any way to eliminate it?

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