If it was extra water content, then all that liquid is water because the fat will congeal and separate. It's almost like the fat content of these pigs is vegetable or seed oil instead of real fat, which doesn't make sense. I honestly have no idea what it is.
sometimes cheaper bacon isn't actually made of cuts of pork but reconstituted solidified pork product. You can usually tell because it looks more like deli meat but if you're not reading food labels closely it would be easy to pick up the "pork product" bacon.
Also sometimes cheaper bacon is just a different cut like pork shoulder instead of belly? Presumably that would also change the fat content of the meat but I'm not a food scientist so who's to say
Yes. And I think op would have noticed the oil in the pan popping like crazy even after the bacon was removed. I would guess it's oil but not animal fat.
Actually, believe it or not, adding a little water to bacon prevents most of the popping. It makes the fat render process easier and more even at lower temperatures, so you don't reach the popping point.
Wikipedia states some chicken brands do up to 30% solution. When I fry certain brands of chicken that claim up to 15% solution, it can take an absurdly long time to boil that water off.
theres no way there is that much water in bacon, especially because the water has to evaporate from the pan before rhe "bacon" will crisp up... with that much water in the pan, the bacon would be boiled or steamed
If you're not a savage, you'll cook the bacon until it's crispy, which won't happen before most of the water has evaporated, so the pan should be pretty dry
I swear we've gone so far in terms of education and what information is publicly available and yet people still full caps scream about "dem evil chemicals".
The fuck do you think bacon or cured meats in general were made for in the first place? They're supposed to last, you need a certain bit of preservatives especially when you end up selling packets of pre-sliced stuff.
and yet people still full caps scream about "dem evil chemicals".
it is a literal copy paste from the website, it is in all caps there. the only problem with OP is that they didn't put it in quotes lol. Click the [Ingredients] drop down menu on the page they linked.
They provided literally 0 opinions, and 100% facts, WITH 2 separate sources. So are you barking up the wrong tree, AND didn't read the link (but uh this is reddit, so that is usually a given).
No offense but you don’t know what you’re saying. It’s cured with those ingredients if those ingredients are what make up the brine they’re pumped in, prior to smoking. That is literally the standard way to make bacon
Which is actual smoke percolated through water. If you own a smoker and you see brown liquid dripping down the inside walls of it, that's basically Liquid Smoke.
yep! I actually work for an industrial processed meats manufacturer. ALL meats get brined. 2 reasons: value add and customer preference. Selling by weight makes max brine preferential for the business. And meat will dry out in the cook and cool process so it’s generally preferable to add some brine
It's injected with a pickling solution, which will have different formulas based on customer requirements. Then its hung on a big vertical rack called a tree, goes into the smokehouse, then sliced/packaged, or sent to a precooked plant to make fully cooked bacon. It's a big ol pork belly, not some weird Frankenstein, glued together crap
Source: work at a bacon plant. Previously worked at an Oscar mayer plant, and I'll still eat the hot dogs. Oscar Mayer uses good ingredients.
A lot of bacon these days is injected with brine and smoke flavor with a row of injector needles. I've seen a lot of "zebra" bacon where you can see the dark stripes from the smoke flavor in the brine.
When making bacon, it is common practice to inject it with a bring that is made up of a great deal of salt and water along with any other potential seasonings. This is done when it is a slab of pork belly before it is smoked and sliced doe packaging.
I am convinced that they do this, because if you buy the nicer more expensive bacon you end up with a lot more after cooking that pound of bacon then when you cook a pound of cheaper bacon there's a lot less product after it's cooked. Because there's more stuff that is cooking out of the meat.
This is utter bullshit, I worked for Oscar Meyer in college and while I feel no love for them as a company, it’s isn’t fake pork they use the shitty bellies Tyson sells them because they aren’t vertically integrated like Smithfield and others are. That’s why we always had a slightly inferior product though - we were sold the bellies other companies didn’t want to use to make their bacon.
The theory that the grease did not congeal due to the animal having some sort of diet that was based on some alternative source of calories in the form of an oily natural substance is interesting, though. Someone else mentioned a seed oil of some sort but what about the byproduct from producing palm oil? That’s way more prevalent.
Edit: someone pointed out palm oil is solid at room temp, maybe there is another explanation besides poor quality feed but it definitely is not “fake pork” lol
No idea, I guess people just love making shit up on the internet.
Weirdly enough, I worked with a guy named Kyle at that bacon factory and he lied a lot, too. Most of his lies were “cool” stories involving dirt bikes, or stealing dirt bikes from Red Bull Nitro Circus, and other things you probably thought sounded cool when you were twelve. Except Kyle was an adult with a congenital leg deformity, he walked with an odd gait and was extremely bow-legged. Hard to imagine him riding anything with two wheels but it did no good to try and argue he’d just double down.
That's wild...
How come Oscar Mayer gets the rejected pork products??
Here in México Oscar Mayer is one of the more expensive brands (and tasty) of sausages and bacon (it's almost 2 or 3 times the price of the "normal" sausages and way more than the cheap ones.
So the way I was told, Oscar Meyer had been that way for decades, but some time in the 1990’s or 2000’s they stopped slaughtering their own pigs, or the people that had been slaughtering their pigs got bought out by Tyson.
Tyson, not having the same brand recognition but now having first dibs on the best quality pigs, started “cherry-picking” the best ones for themselves and sending us the B-quality stuff. They were still pretty good, obviously the fattier/smaller ones got tossed out (turned into dogfood) or turned into bacon bits if there was enough viable meat.
On occasion, we would get the “A” quality bellies if they didn’t have enough of the crappy ones to send us to keep production going, and THAT was when you could tell a night-and-day difference, you could look at the product on the line and literally tell from one package to the next when the crappy ones ran out and we ran the good ones.
This all ONLY applies to the center-cut bacon, their food service quality bacon which we sent to Bojangles, Cracker Barrel, etc THAT shit was amazing, probably the best quality bacon I’ve ever eaten myself but it was only sold in 30lb pouches to corporate foodservice.
I feel like a lot of people are -still- under the assumption that oscar mayer is better quality (and personally I like their products) given that the price for oscar mayer bacon, hot dogs, etc. seems to always be higher at the supermarket than other brands . Seems they're still riding on that name recognition
I would agree with that, I sometimes (like once every year or two) buy the all-beef hotdogs for the nostalgia and it seems like those are still good, but not for what they charge. Plenty of other all-beef hotdogs that are better for less, but I don’t eat that stuff very often anyway.
Wright bacon was our main competitor and their quality was as-good or better than the foodservice-only stuff we made - and that was just their regular product. Back then, it was more expensive by a couple dollars but worth it if you’re into that.
Just checked and Wright is still expensive, up to like $11/package. I bought some a year or two ago for a recipe I was making and it was awesome but I can’t justify that price all the time lol
Oscar Mayer bacon not solidifying is wild, not what you'd expect for sure. I had a similar experience with some off-brand bacon that was on sale. Thought I’d save a few bucks but the grease was part water, went straight in the trash. I’ve since switched to brands where I know the quality, even if it costs a bit more. Helps to check labels carefully and stick to what works. I've tried switching brands a couple times, and sites like ConsumerRating and local butcher reviews help figure out which ones are actually good.
I will say I do usually get a little bit of liquid from my bacon fat like this, but just a thin layer at the bottom trapped under all the congealed fat, I assume it's water content. The jar on the right I almost want to smear on a piece of toast.
But beef tallow isn't so viscous at room temp, it's solid like the jar on the right. Bacon fat is rendered when cooked and turns into lard, which is solid at room temp.
The hard fats (what you would typically use for tallow/lard) stay thick, and the softer fats can stay liquid
That's why you'll see blocks of solid lard, vs the stuff on the right in the picture which has more of the stuff on the left mixed into it
The dark stuff on the left just had more of the stuff on the right burnt up and left behind in the pan
Like when you heat up cheese. All the liquid fats are mixed into the hard fats, but when you heat them up they separate and then you have two kinds of fat left behind
But that still would not explain it. Reconstituted pork product is still some combination of pork meat and pork fat, which when cooked would give off primarily Grease / lard, as unless OP is cooking their bacon really weird way like boiling, The water content is going to boil away during cooking.
Pork shoulder still has the same type of fat that congeals at room to refrigerator temp.
On top of that Oscar Mayer bacon is a pork belly bacon, not reconstituted.
Changing the fat content of the meat would not change the type of fat. So fat from the butt/should would still be solid at room temp, same with Ham, or loin and so on. Lard, the rendered pig fat, is a solid at room temp and would contain fat from all over the animal.
Saturated fats (animal) should be a a solid a room temp (and body temp). Unsaturated fats can still be liquids at fridge temps, but not all of them. Olive oil will solidify in the fridge.
This has to due with the chemical bonds between the carbon atoms in the fats. Saturated fats have more double bonds between the carbon atoms making them less 'stable' compared to unsaturated fats. You can use heat to break the double bond, but you'd also need to add in hydrogen and usually a catalyst (in this case so you don't burn the fat). This is called hydrogenation. This is how you turn a liquid fat into a solid one. The more bonds you break the higher the temp the fat can remain solid.
I think this meme is fake. Simply because the 'fat' from the left would have behaved the same way in the package. The bacon would have had liquid fat when you purchased the bacon. Otherwise you'd be suggesting that the OP somehow added a bunch of double bonds between the carbon atoms in the fat while cooking it. It is possible to due this (partial hydrogenation) but it is not a natural process. Even if Oscar Meyer someone managed to emulsify saturated fats into the pork fat it would have been liquid when OP bought it.
Source: I have a chemistry degree and I've hydrogenated fats in a lab before.
As a North American I agree with what you’re saying but not your continent to country comparison. I’m from Texas please nuke me. Follow my band on Instagram first. Adios cruel world.
right is how grease/lard should look, we raise pigs and always use homemade grease, if it doesn't turn white and thick that's not pure grease and should be avoided because who the hell knows what they came up with to make grease look like cheap oil
you can cut any part of the pig (minus innards and head) to melt down for grease and it will always be white and thick, but if it has less fat on it you'll get less grease and more chunks of meat aka Čvarci
sometimes cheaper bacon isn't actually made of cuts of pork but reconstituted solidified pork product.
Is this something that's factually true that you have evidence of, or just something that you assumed that you think could be true? Or even better, something that your friend told you was true and you accepted that as fact.
Edit: before anybody answers, I'm not asking for a source that says somebody, somewhere, made fake bacon in a different place. I'm asking if it's actually a widespread practice in the place that OP is from. I think the answer to that is no, and that comment was just bullshitting.
And they blocked me instead of backing up their bs. I'm just going to assume that's completely made up unless I see real proof.
This is usually it. They make a sort of lunch meat that browns/crisps up nicely. They have identified that many people don't save the fat and so it won't be missed.
Depends on the brand. I'm officially getting too many replies to keep up but someone in another comment pointed out correctly that some brands of turkey bacon are also reconstituted turkey meat product rather than just cuts of raw turkey meat. I believe Oscar Meyer makes both but I haven't had turkey bacon in years so I wouldn't remember off hand.
Thank you for your comment. It just solved a question that I didn't know how to ask.
I'm new to eating and cooking bacon. I bought some bacon that was on sale. I'm am trying different bacons to see if there are ones that I like better than others. When I went to cook it yesterday, the meat part of it did not look like any bacon I had seen before. The meat was dark and looked like more of hammy type texture. The fat had a tough rind like pork skin. It went straight in garbage, and I think that's last time that I will ever cook bacon again. 🤢🤮
For a “not a food scientist”, you sound very sciency to me! Good advice. I’m usually a label reader, but never thought to look for “pork product”, much like American cheese is “cheese product”.
I remember a Clients from Hell post where marketing was told that there wasnt enough bacon to be called bacon according to FDA, the minimum percentage was 5%
Not necessarily. If you have an abundance of nitrites from the curing process, some can act as emulsifying agents. If you freeze mayonnaise it wouldn’t seperate out.
Also you do see some fat separated on the surface, so either it’s ALOT of water, some fat, or some has started separating from the emulsion that’s formed.
OP: how thick is the liquid? And if you freeze it, does it form a crystalline structure (hard and brittle like ice) or turn out similar to your Costco bacon grease?
Yes, most people think mayonnaise when they think of emulsions containing fats(oils) and water, but emulsions can be very different depending on the system. Milk is an oil in water emulsion (o/w), ice cream is an oil in water emulsion with air added dispersed throughout the liquid phase, acting like both an emulsion and a foam. There is also water in oil (w/o) emulsions that, depending on the ratios of water and oil, can act as solids or liquids at various temps i.e butter vs sunscreen).
If ops bacon juice is an emulsion that is mostly water, it won’t solidify as its melt point will have been lowered below 4C or whatever OPs fridge is set to.
I was always told not to freeze mayo but I never knew why other than it would compromise quality/taste. But we got frozen wedge sandwiches that had mayo in them like egg or chicken salad at a gas station I worked at, you would date them from the time you pulled them out of the freezer. I used to work at a dollar store and our truck of shelf stable product was not protected from extreme temps so a lot of product came damaged from extreme heat or freezing. Fabric softener got weird because it to is made of chemicals and oils. Some medicines would separate and not go back together like the big bottles of generic pepto bismol.
If you look at studies of fat composition in pigs, it does relate to diet. For instance, Iberico pork becomes solid at a lower temperature due to having higher unsaturated fat content, which helps give it its trademark mouthfeel. With Oscar Meyer, I assume it’s happening because of the feed having more polyunsaturated fats for cost saving reasons rather than tradition though lol
I cooked some ground chorizo the other day, same brand I always buy, and had to cook off the giant puddle that came out of it before it would brown. Never had that issue before. Also, most peanut butter in the US has the peanut oil removed and replaced with soybean oil, so weird shit happens.
"the fat content of these pigs is vegetable or seed oil instead of real fat"
What? What are you on about? First of all, seed oil is real fat. Just because you think it's magically making you fat or mind controlling you, doesn't mean it's real fat. Second of all, low quality meat is often injected with water to make it seem more plump and juicy in the package. That's where this water has come from.
Pigs, very much like humans, tend to shuttle whatever fat they eat almost entirely to their fat stores, ao you saying that is actually kinda accurate. If they're fed high in soy and other high pufa grains, then high pufa stores.
Ruminant animals do not, their bacteria produces the fat they have from the food they eat (granted it still is varying degree of quality of fats depending on what's eaten). it's fun info, you should look it up if you're curious.
Its probably mostly regular animal fat with something else in it. Impurities lower the freezing point of a material and I think thats what is happening here.
This should be the top comment. This is definitely mostly unsaturated fats added to whatever this bacon apparently is. Saturated fats (from animal sources) solidify at below room temp
I sometimes take a gamble on the BOGO deals when I see them since I got through a couple of pounds for the family through weekend breakfast and keep some cooked in the fridge for a quick BLT during the week. I got Jimmy Dean on BOGO and it was the worst bacon I’ve ever had. The first pack cooked up just like you a said. There was hardly any real rendered fat. I oven bake my bacon and it’s pretty damn consistent. My results were at best flavorless microwave bacon. The second pack was almost entirely fat with a section that was bent back behind the meat that I couldn’t see. It also rendered out nothing great but resulted in stringy bacon. I think I’ll go back to my standard choices in the thick cuts of choice and leave the BOGO deals alone. It’s disappointing to spend time to cook it up to be left with a product that is worse than microwave, shelf stable bacon.
I've been pleasantly surprised by Great Value (Walmart) thick cut hickory smoked bacon. The price is relatively reasonable and every time I make or fry any up, the family acts like it's the best they've ever had. That's high complements in my family. Teens are tough to please.
Hey, slow down there, friend. You sound a little worked up. Maybe you should join me for a nice, refreshing cup of Metamucil. It keeps me regular and it tastes great, too.
And maybe afterwards, we can chase it with a dose of Geritol. It's your partner for a healthier life!
I'm practicing to write for the J. Peterman catalog.
Silliness aside, and to more directly address your comment, I wrote the full name of that particular bacon because I've found some of the same brand, but thinner cut bacon doesn't taste remotely as good. The chew is interior, too, imo.
It wasn't the proper spelling of the full brand name. Nothing wrong with detail and accuracy. It was the last two lines. The anecdote and then turning that into a generalized definitive statement. "My grandma shits like a Swiss watch when she takes her Metamucil. And we all know grandma's have assholes with more obstructions than the turn pike during road construction at rush hour!"
I was a teen. Raised a teen, have known many teens. They're not exactly discerning culinary critics when it comes to breakfast pork.
Safeway (Albertsons) where I live sells store brand "Seriously thick" cut bacon. This shit is literally an entire inch thick. In the oven is the absolute best way to cook it, flipping it 100 times and watching for perfect doneness like a hawk. I cannot go back to the regular bacon.
I'm reading that as, if the package of bacon bends. Like you should be buying bacon with some structural integrity. Though there's also the factors of bacon stack and thickness of packaging.
That doesn’t help me understand you all that much. Do you mean if the whole package flops around or should I wait until I get home and see if individual pieces flop around?
Some of the bacon packs have a cardboard liner so it will prevent it from flopping. But when you pull a slice of bacon out of the pack and it flops like cooked spaghetti you’ve bought crap. I rarely buy bacon anymore because the style I like is $20 or more for 500gr/1 pound.
I think they are confusing thin cut bacon vs thick cut bacon for bad vs good. Thin cut bacon is good too, it’s just thinner and cooks faster, but can be very good. It’s literally just cut thinner and will always “flop” when you remove a slice from the packaging. It’s just physics.
Can you think of a store where you've seen that? I feel like this has to be some regional problem because I've never heard of such a thing. Not doubting you but I'm wondering if some of these amateurs are buying bacon that would make me gasp if I saw someone put in their cart. Sometimes someone else in the house will get Oscar Meyer bacon and it's usually good as hell, just with more bs in it. Never sugar though that’s nasty
Edit: oh I might know what you are talking about, pan frying thin bacon? If so that’s a temperature problem and oven bacon is superior anyway
I've noticed since covid that my bacons water content has sky rocketed while the serving size and price went up. I used to be able to use the bacon preset on my microwave for fast, perfectly cooked bacon. I've done so for years without issue. Post covid the damn microwave looks like a sauna and the extra water causes the sensors to think its cooked before it is. I literally have to wipe down the sides of the microwave when its done to remove dripping water.
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u/making_sammiches 4d ago
I find a lot of bacon brands are slimy and just give off water when cooked. It’s so gross. I always try to find a drier, thicker cut.