What goes into making our products?...The making of Bacon...

With mass production and uniformity common in most products, even within our food it is often easy to forget the effort that goes into producing our staple goods.

Take the humble slice of bacon: Pink, Crisp and salty goodness. How does it get that good?

At Redborne we make our own using specially selected cuts of pork and traditional methods:
We start by weighing the pork, the salt that is rubbed into the meat must only be mixed at a specific ratio. Too much and the meat is unpalatable, too little and the uncured meat could turn rancid before the process is complete. The salt itself is not just any old salt from your kitchen table, the Sodium Nitrate gives the bacon its characteristic pink colour as well as its ability to last longer in our cupboards and fridges than pork.

Sugar, cure and spices (Coarsely ground)...

The salt is mixed at a ratio of 5% salt compared to the weight of the meat i.e. a 1 kg joint will use 50g of curing salt. To the salt we also add muscavado sugar that adds a sweet almost treacle note to the meat and a carefully selected blend of spices. Because the mix is not in a liquid and none is added this is known as a dry cure...

Pork rubbed in bacon cure ready to rest in the fridge...

The meat is left to cure for 5 days after which it has changed colour, in order to allow the flavour to develop the bacon is rinsed to remove any excess cure and then hung for at least another 7 days. As our bacon is dry cured as long as it is kept in cool conditions it could be left to hang indefinitely, as eventually it would resemble a Parma Ham.

Bacon hanging in the smoker...

The smoker full of oak chips...

After 7 days we smoke the bacon on site using oak or beech trimmings, this adds yet more flavour to the bacon. After resting for a further day the bacon is sliced, packed and ready for sale...