In the UK, bacon is considered almost as a staple among meat eaters! It adorns our sandwiches, our breakfast plates, and any occasion a quick snack is in order… Bacon and it’s cured brethren haven’t had a very good time in the press recently, but this is much to do with the additives, preservatives and other nasty chemicals added in the curing process, which begins with factory farmed pigs.
Bacon, as a supermarket product, has become synonymous with shrinkage in the pan, that white fatty scum that surrounds it as it cooks, and those wafer thin slices which are virtually transparent! There are various reasons for all of these tragedies, the king of which is that, the product your buying isn’t really bacon at all, not for the most part anyway; it is a low grade meat product, which is injected with a brine solution, packed with a variety of chemicals, to bulk its size and weight, cure it very quickly, extend the products shelf life (so it can travel most of the way across Europe), and to give it a pink and long lasting colour. Even the salt used in this kind of product is very low grade, with no mineral content, and full of anti-caking agents. The chemical components of this non-food are highly carcinogenic, and undoubtedly lead to ill health!
Even most butchers, in this day and age, buy in a bag of pre-mixed cure, which is largely full of the same toxins mentioned above; the skill and art of hand-curing is largely dead and gone, replaced by the same rapid, chemically overdosed unpleasantness that perpetrates most of our modern mass-produced goods, food, cosmetic or otherwise!
Potassium Nitrate, also used in gunpowder, is used primarily to prevent nasty bacteria growing during the curing process and to artificially enhance that ‘nice pink colour’, but it also kills you.
THE ANSWER, just buy real bacon; from pigs which were happy to live, not stuck in a factory depressed!
Cowran Estate’s bacon is very different: not only do we produce our pork very differently, and ultimately nurture very happy, free-range pigs; but our bacon, couldn’t be further from the factory-produced rubbish either!
Our own free-range pork is cut and 
cured, by hand, to our own recipes! The only salt we use is Organic Sea Salt, which contains no anti-caking agents, among other fresh and dried natural ingredients, which we’re are proud of and always delighted to disclose.
We use only natural nitrates to help our bacon cure, we find ours in the plant world where they are abundant and in a more compatible form.
Our bacon and gammons are cured with several, very different, recipes. We produce a delicious, and very flavourful standard cured bacon in all cuts; and can enhance your bacon experience even further with our speciality cures.
Our Lavender Cured Bacon is delicious, and a favourite of everyone on the estate; it’s delicate flavour makes a delicious sandwich and adds a different dimension to this national favourite! If you prefer the sweeter things in life, why not try our Molasses Cured Bacon; it’s dark colour comes from the molasses sugar used to enhance it’s cure.
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