Deborah Ross
IT's been a quiet summer here at Dross Publications Inc., largely because the editorial team have proved themselves lazy and useless (BEYOND BELIEF!), and I would sack them all, was going to sack them all, but then remembered that I am the editorial team, I could sack myself, I suppose, but I'm reluctant to do so because I'll cry, and I truly cannot stand to see anyone cry. Don't know where to look and all that. So I'll just have to carry on working for myself, I guess, which does have some advantages, because when my copy is late and I insist the dog ate it, I do tend to believe myself. I'm good to work for, I'll give me that. Do I have a dog? I hope so, because I have always wanted one. Perhaps it's a chocolate Labrador with big, mournful eyes.
Now, on to bacon. Hang on, I can hear you saying, what's bacon got to do with anything? What the bloody hell are you going on about now? Ah, but the thing is, I do have some quite serious things to say about bacon, and it all ties up with Dross Publications Inc. because, such is my newly acquired expertise, I'm thinking of expanding into radio with Talk Pork (960 MW, or lower if you are using a fan oven). I've become quite an expert on bacon lately because it just makes me so cross. You know how it is: you put a load in the frying pan, but will it fry? It will not. It just sort of poaches itself in a white glue. Recently, even, I tried to save a panful by draining it I think you know that someone has been messing around with your bacon when you have to drain it through a colander and whacking it under the grill. But would it crisp up? No, it would not. It simply shrank further, leaked more white gunge into the grill pan, and then just sort of steamed. In the end, it went from pan to cat's bowl to bin, because not even our cat, Fatbelly which shows you how fussy he usually is would touch it. Actually, now I think about it, the fact that I have a cat probably means I don't have a dog . I'm going to call myself in for a good talking to tomorrow.
So it made me think, which I accept is a novelty, and my head still hurts from it, but what exactly are you buying when you are buying most bacons? We all know modern, mass-produced bacon contains added water, hut why? How? Well, traditional bacon is made by rubbing meat with salts and (sometimes, depending on the cure) sugars, placing it on trays for a few days to allow the juices to drain, then hanging it for a week or more. However, large-scale factory processors inject their meat with a saline solution (which often contains MSG, the artificial flavour enhancer which produces the white gunge) by pumping the meat with hundreds of needles. This process not only doubles the size of the meat, but also means you can cure pork in 12 hours as opposed to the three weeks it would otherwise take. So it profits everyone. Or would do, if only it didn't solely profit the manufacturer. I did try to speak to one of these manufacturers, but he wasn't having it. 'Can you assure me it's not an article on how awful British bacon is?'
'Urn . . . no?' I don't think we are going to keep in touch.
However, the thing I most wanted to know is: once you've cooked the meat and removed all the water, does it actually work out cheaper? What's the real price? To this end, I bought several bacons (all unsmoked back bacon as far as possible), weighed out 200g, grilled the rashers for five minutes each side, weighed the meat afterwards, then worked out the cost for 100g of cooked product. Here are the results:
Tesco Value: £0.78p for 200g. Cooked weight: 125g. Price per 100g cooked: 62.5p Jack Scaife Ltd Dry Cure Bacon: £1.71 for 200g. Cooked weight: 175g. Price per 100g cooked: 97.7p Waitrose free range: 11.80 for 200g. Cooked weight: 160g. Price per 100g cooked: £1.12 Royal Crest: £1.49 for 200g. Cooked weight: 100g. Price per 100g cooked: £1.49 Tesco Finest Maple Cure: £2.15 for 200g. Cooked weight: 140g. Price per 100g cooked: £1.53
Walls: 11.80 for 200g. Cooked weight: 120g. Price per 100g cooked: £1.50
Suffolk Crown: £1.99 for 200g. Cooked weight: 120g. Price per 100g cooked: £1.66 Harris: £1.99 for 200g. Cooked weight: 120g. Price per 100g cooked: £1.66 Organic dry cure bacon from Freemans, local butcher: £2.50 for 200g. Cooked weight: 150g. Price per 100g cooked: £1.67
I don't think you have to be Einstein (thank God, because I'd look crap with that stupid hair) to work out that cheap, massproduced bacon isn't, in fact, cheaper at all, once the added water has been removed. This adding water business is, in fact, a sensationally sly thing because: a) it's making you pay for something you do not want while b) attempting to make you believe you are getting more of what you do want. It's a double sodding con! The bastards! Why do we buy it? Because, on the whole, we don't know enough to be outraged, even though we should be. Take Royal Crest, for example, which shrinks by 50 per cent. I mean, if you bought a packet of 20 fags and found there were only 10 in the packet, you'd complain quick enough, right? Plus, of course, the bacon itself is horrible, and virtually impossible to cook acceptably. Take the Walls stuff which, when put under the grill, goes a shocking, ghostly white, then flinches and jerks as it shrinks. It's the twitching corpse of bacons. It also lists dextrose, flavour enhancer (E640), glucose syrup and diphosphates among the ingredients. And as for Tesco Finest Canadian Maple Cure, this is a rubbish product masquerading as a premium one, containing as it does 'sodium polyphosphate', a synthetic chemical which causes the meat to hold a greater weight of water than it would otherwise do. Yum-yum!
OK, can the label tell you how much water has been added? Nope. Not properly. Indeed, according to the Food Regulation Act of 1996 bloody hell, I'm turning into Roger Cook! bacon with less than 10 per cent water requires no declaration of amount at all. (Why? I mean, if I bought a packet of ten fags and one was missing, I'd be pretty pissed off.) But what about bacon with more than 10 per cent water added? Ah, this is where it gets very sly indeed. In this case, a declaration must be made in the form of 'with not more than y per cent water' where 'y is expressed in multiples of five'. So, bacon containing 14 per cent water would be labelled 'bacon with not more than 5 per cent water'. In other words, ignore the first ten and then round up to the nearest multiple of five. Even though 'not more than 5 per cent water' is a blatant lie? It contains 14 per cent water, for Christ's sake!!!! I'm sorry. I'm sure this is very boring for some people, but it's just such a scandal, don't you think?
Now, on to the traditional, dry-cured, proper bacons. These are the ones from Waitrose, Freemans (our local butcher) and Jack Scaife Ltd, who sell their bacon via mail order or their shop in Keighley, Yorkshire. All were as bacon should be, with proper meaty textures, proper meaty smells (quite strong in some instances, very piggy) and no bubbling white scum. Delicious, particularly the Jack Scaife, which also worked out excellent value for money. These are the bacons to bother with. Ignore the rest as you are only, in effect, paying more for less, and more for an inferior product. Anyway, that's it. I'm totally exhausted now and am going to lie down for the rest of the day, if not the week. I don't even have enough energy to sack myself. Maybe I do have a dog. Maybe I should give myself the benefit of the doubt. Toodle-pip!
To order Jack Scaife bacon, visit wwwjacicscaife.co.uk.
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