Taste Panel - Slow Food Edinburgh

20^th May 2009

Bacon

Product: Dry cured back bacon

Producers:

Edinburgh Bacon Producers

Crombies of Edinburgh Butchers, 97 Broughton Street: Home-cured bacon

Findlay’s of Portobello Butchers, 116 Portobello High Street: Home-cured bacon

Whitmuir Organics, Lamancha, West Linton: Home cured bacon from own pigs

Comparison Product from outside Edinburgh (available within Edinburgh.)

Reiver Country Farm Foods, Reston, Eyemouth, Berwickshire: Home cured bacon from own pigs

Additional note: A number of the panel have previously tasted Ballencrief bacon, which is home cured from Ballencrief’s own pigs. We weren’t able to purchase Ballencrief bacon in time for the tasting session but would recommend it from personal knowledge and will add tasting notes at a later date when we can include it in a Taste Panel session.

 

Tasting notes:

All of the bacon was grilled at the same time to give equal cooking time and temperature.

Reiver: Split favourite with panel. Memories of “proper old fashioned bacon” with good meaty flavour and nice balance of fat that crisped up well.

Crombie’s: Split favourite with panel. On the high salt side but retaining meaty flavours. Good fat, balanced amount with buttery flavour. Firm, dense almost dry bacon, take care not to overcook or get especially thick cut.

Whitmuir: Very salty which detracted from the bacon and didn’t allow the other flavours to show through. The pack we bought was from quite a small piece of bacon which could have taken up more salt that intended in the curing process.

Findlays: This was cut very thinly and so became quite dry when cooked. Less salt than all the other bacons and resulted in thinner, hammy flavour.