BACON WEEK / ALL ABOUT BACON
A quick guide to this legendary cured meat
Bacon
A kiwi family favourite, can be for breakfast, lunch,
dinner or midnight snack.
Great with eggs, French toast, pancakes, waffles or
in sandwiches, soups, pastas, etc, the list is endless.
Where it comes from
Bacon is a type of salt-cured pork. Bacon is
prepared from several different cuts of meat,
typically from the pork belly or from back
cuts, which have less fat than the belly.
It is eaten on its own, as a side dish (particularly in
breakfasts), or used as a minor ingredient to flavour
dishes (e.g., the club sandwich). Bacon is also used
for barding and larding roasts, especially game,
including venison and pheasant.
Bacon or ‘bacoun’ was a Middle English term used
to refer to all pork in general. The term bacon comes
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YOU HAD ME AT BACON
from various Germanic and French dialects. It derives
from the French bako, Old High German bakko, and
Old Teutonic backe, all of which refer to the back.
There are breeds of pigs particularly raised for bacon,
notably the Yorkshire and Tamworth.
The phrase ‘bring home the bacon’ comes from the
12th century when a church in Dunmow, England
offered a side of bacon to any man who could swear
before God and the congregation that he had not
fought or quarreled with his wife for a year and a day.
Any man that could ‘bring home the bacon’ was
highly respected in his community.