Apparently this last week has been Bacon Week here in the UK. A chance to get to know some premium bacons.
In my house every week is bacon week, I love the stuff. Though I try not to go too mad.
Imagine my delight then when I received this from the kind people at Real Bacon:
A large box with rather a lot of premium bacon in it for me to try. YUM.
I normally get my bacon either from the local farmers market or from a farm shop. But how could I resist free bacon and you know someone’s got to test this stuff for you.
There were 3 different premium dry cured unsmoked back bacon’s for me to try, 2 packs of each 
All from outdoor bred (though not necessarily raised) pigs and also all air dried.
So to try we had:
Marks & Spencer Outdoor Bread Dry Cure Smoked Back: rubbed with cheshire rock salt and cured for 5 days before air drying for 14 days
Sainsburys Taste the Difference Dry Cure Unsmoked Back: cured with sea salt and air dried for 14 days to Jack Scaife of Keighly family recipe
Tesco Finest: cured for 17 days to Richard Woodall of Cumbria family recipe
In all cases we made bacon butties with the bacon and also tasted some straight from the pan (we dry fried).
Any good?
Yes all were good and if I needed decent bacon and had run out of my stash from farmers markets I’d happily buy any of these. If I had a choice of the three I’d go for the Sainsbury which was not too salty and nicely bacony although it gave off some liquid when cooked it had the best taste. The M&S was more salty which took away rom the bacony-ness but if you like salt this is the one to go for. The Tesco was milder all round still a good bacon but a little bit less interesting.
In the interests of fairness I didn’t know which bacon I was being given on any of the occasions I sampled them.
So if you don’t have a good bacon producer you know of then these three make tasty alternatives. I’ll be sticking with my farmers market supplier but if I run out I now know there are some good alternatives at the supermarket