# Nasty bacon



## Laura Workman (May 10, 2002)

OK, I purchased a piglet, 7/8 Berkshire, 1/8 Duroc. Raised him to around 200 pounds. (He was highly obnoxious, or he would have gotten bigger.) Had the butcher's kill guy come out and do the kill. Nice, clean kill and quick processing. He was delivered to the butcher. I ordered bacon and ham. I wanted to order smoked sausages but was told that they don't smoke sausage on custom butchered animals, though they do sell smoked sausage at the butcher shop. Is that normal, for a butcher not to offer smoked sausages from a custom animal?

So we got fresh sausage, breakfast sausage and some kind of german garlic sausage they call "bratwurst." Chops and roasts taste excellent. Breakfast sausages are good, but we're not big fans of the fresh, unsmoked "brats." 

The pig was butchered in August. We picked the cured meat up in September, shortly after they told us it was ready, took it straight home, and dropped it into the deep freeze. Cooked some in September, October, and the last about a month ago, with no discernable difference in taste between September and November.

Ham tastes excellent. Bacon is bad. Tastes like it spent a week in the sun before they froze it. We ate the first couple packages, and thought the meat tasted funny, but we were bacon deprived and this was our first custom bacon, so we thought maybe we were wrong about the funkiness. Third time's a charm, though, and we only ate a couple pieces from the last package and fed the rest to the dogs. It's just not any fun to eat bacon that tastes rotten, and eating bacon is supposed to be fun! We are disappointed to say the least. 

I spoke to the woman at the butcher shop today and she told me that bacon is only supposed to be stored for ONE MONTH IN A DEEP FREEZE. :shocked::shocked::shocked: OK, does that surprise anyone else here? She said they ran the hams and the bacon through the same process at the same time, but bacon gets stronger in the freezer quickly. When I said that we've frozen Fletcher's bacon for months, she said that they use very little salt and very little nitrates, so their bacon won't keep as well in the freezer as commercial bacon.

I'm thinking that maybe one-inch-thick bacon slabs might better have spent a little less time in the cure than whole hams. Frankly, this annoys me greatly since the whole reason I bought and raised that particular pig was so that I could have professionally cured meats.

Has anyone else here had professionally done bacon taste like road kill after a month in the deep freeze? Am I wrong to think they screwed it up pretty badly?


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## highlands (Jul 18, 2004)

Laura Jensen said:


> OK, I purchased a piglet, 7/8 Berkshire, 1/8 Duroc. Raised him to around 200 pounds. (He was highly obnoxious, or he would have gotten bigger.)


I have had the experience of a mean animal that tasted bad. She looked like a body builder. Definitely was a female but nasty attitude and huge muscles, little body fat, etc. The meat was not good. Nothing like our usual meat. I watch out for that phenotype and culled her line.



Laura Jensen said:


> Is that normal, for a butcher not to offer smoked sausages from a custom animal?


The issue may be how much they can send through the ginder/stuffer in a batch using the spice packages they are approved for. This is something you can blame the USDA's HACCP program for. It makes it hard for the processor to adjust things on the fly if their label/ingredients/HACCP weren't written for it. I use percents to allow for this but often batches are written in pounds which causes this issue.



Laura Jensen said:


> I spoke to the woman at the butcher shop today and she told me that bacon is only supposed to be stored for ONE MONTH IN A DEEP FREEZE. :shocked::shocked::shocked: OK, does that surprise anyone else here? She said they ran the hams and the bacon through the same process at the same time, but bacon gets stronger in the freezer quickly. When I said that we've frozen Fletcher's bacon for months, she said that they use very little salt and very little nitrates, so their bacon won't keep as well in the freezer as commercial bacon.


Odd.


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## Allen W (Aug 2, 2008)

I've never heard that cured bacon would only keep a month. Sounds like an excuse to me. If the bacon has a good red bacon color I would think it was cured all right. Having more fat it would show miss handling sooner then the hams. Pork tells on the butcher faster then most other meats. The longer pork stays fresh the cleaner the butcher.


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## rj_in_MA (Apr 27, 2004)

Laura Jensen said:


> Has anyone else here had professionally done bacon taste like road kill after a month in the deep freeze? Am I wrong to think they screwed it up pretty badly?


We've had many pigs butchered by different custom slaughter houses, and have kept bacon for nearly a year in the deep freeze before eating it with no noticeable change in the flavor over time.


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## DutchAcres (Jun 11, 2008)

Your experience sounds very weird to me. Have you used this butcher before and had an okay experience?
We use a dry-rub on our pork bellies, and then they are hung in a smoker. Once they're done smoking, they are allowed to fully cool, and then they're sliced, vacuum packed and frozen. If we don't eat it all right away, we usually have some in the freezer a year later when we butcher the next batch of pigs. 
I don't know about how your butcher does things, but I've never heard of bacon (or any meat, for that matter) that wouldn't keep longer than a month in the freezer if it was handled properly. Maybe they had a traffic jam at the smoker and your pork bellies sat out a bit? We butcher at the end of October-ish to ensure cold temperatures. If you butchered in August maybe the heat played a role? Just guessing.


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## blaineiac (Jan 10, 2010)

Unless I missed it, you didn't say if he was a barrow or intact. I killed a york X boar at #225 and had to give the bacon to the inlaws. Wouldn't even let the GF cook it, it stunk so bad. I don't mean to change this into the never ending discussion, but that would be my guess. By the way... They loved the bacon.


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## 6e (Sep 10, 2005)

They probably just screwed up. We had a pig butchered once that the bacon was nasty! You'd hit spots where it tasted cured and spots where it tasted gross. We ended up throwing the rest out to the dogs. Very disappointing.


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## Ed Norman (Jun 8, 2002)

The absorption of the cure is slowed by fat and skin. Usually a ham is injected to prevent bone spoil, so cure can work from inside out as well as outside in. If the bacons were tossed into brine to cure, it could be the fattiest areas went rancid before the cure reached them. On the other hand, I have made bacon with many different recipes and a few methods, and haven't made an inedible batch yet. Some were better than other. My latest batch was perfect, and I am sticking to that method. 

They could have also left the bacons laying around in the heat, or the temp was too high during the brining or curing, or they messed up the temp during the smoking, or they popped the guts during gutting and didn't get the mess washed off, or the hog tasted bad. 

A cured meat will last longer than a fresh meat, which just goes without saying. So how could a cured frozen meat go bad faster than an uncured frozen meat? Find a better butcher or do it yourself.


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## Hooba39 (Feb 16, 2010)

Sounds like at some point it was left out or spoiled some. Like Dutch Acres stated above we dry rub our bacon as well, I've ate at least 1 yr old bacon from the freezer and it was fine. 

I'd take some back to them and have them smell it and see what they think. If someone wasn't happy with my product I'd hope they would bring it back so we could see what went wrong.

It's too bad, that's an awesome cross for some nice, thick, meaty bacon.


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## DutchAcres (Jun 11, 2008)

Good point about bringing it back to the butcher for them to see for themselves. Any unsatisfied customer gets their money back. Period. 

If you don't want to be confrontational, you can always say "I've never seen or tasted bacon like this before, do you know why this is different?"


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## Ronney (Nov 26, 2004)

I'm going to go against the grain here and agree with what Laura's butcher lady told her - optimum "shelf" live on modern cured bacon in a freezer in one month, three at the outside before the fat starts to go rancid and gets a stale taste to it which impregnates the meat portion. And if you think about it, it's not hard to work out why. Salt does not freeze, in fact it defrosts which is why they use salt on frozen roads to clear them. Take a packet of bacon and a packet of steak of similar size and weight, put them on the bench to thaw and see which thaws first. It will be the bacon with the fat thawing first. Cured meat does not freeze well, not even corned beef. If it does it will be due to the salt content in it which will stop it from deteriorating in exactly the same way as your great-grandmothers hams and bacon could hang from the kitchen ceiling for 6 months without ponking the place out.

Laura, your time frame is about right. I gather from your post that the first bacon you had back in September/October was good? Now we're half-way through December and it's deteriorating? I would think twice before having a go at your butcher who sounds to have done a good job for you. Perhaps go and have a talk to him and he can explain things to you better than I. 

We kill pigs at least three times a year for our own consumption and apart from the fact that we get through that much pork, part of the reason is the keepability of bacon. Any old bacon I find lurking I cut the fat and rind off and use the meat in casseroles or as topping on grilled dishes.

Cheers,
Ronnie


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## gerold (Jul 18, 2011)

http://nchfp.uga.edu/how/freeze/bacon.html

Some info. on cured bacon.


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## mbosma (May 26, 2011)

OP: You are not alone

I just had my first pigs butchered Nov 1. Used the "highly" recommended butcher in town that everyone uses. The bacon has very little flavor and tastes a little like fish to me. I don't know what's going on, but I'm really dissapointed. One pig was a Poland China, the other was a Berkshire. The berk is a little better than the PC, but both taste blah compared to typical bacon from (ah-hem, exuse me) walmart.

All other cuts have been excellent.

Bacon is my favorite part of the pig and what I looked forward to the most when I decided to raise my own swine. I've even wondered if I can I re-smoke the bacon to give it a decent flavor. Maybe my expectations were not what they should have been.


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## highlands (Jul 18, 2004)

Laura, this raises the question of what is the temperature of your freezer and also is it automatic defrost or manual defrost.

I strongly recommend that people not use automatic defrost freezers. They raise the temperature to get rid of the frost and destroy the food in the process. Furthermore I recommend chest freezers because the cold air stays in them rather than spilling out when you open them so they're more energy efficient.

As to temperature, pork doesn't freeze until about 25Â°F. The recommended temperature for the freezer is 15Â°F or below. I like keeping ours at -10Â°F for the improved quality.

How fast you can get it down to that temperature is also very important. Blast freezing is the process of bring the temperature down very fast so that smaller crystals of ice are formed which improves food quality. Then keeping it at the low temperature maintains that quality. Home freezers will not typically do a good job of quickly freezing a large mass of meat. Something that does help is spreading the meat out around the freezer rather than putting it all in as one block (a box for example). Many butcher have blast freezers just for this purpose.

We have kept bacon for much longer than a month, even longer than a year in some tests, and the quality stays great.


MBosma, what did your pigs eat during their final month of life? The flavor of the last month's food comes out in the fat. This is one possible explanation. How the brine (cure) was done and how the smoking was done also affect it, of course.


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## Ed Norman (Jun 8, 2002)

highlands said:


> Laura, this raises the question of what is the temperature of your freezer and also is it automatic defrost or manual defrost.
> 
> I strongly recommend that people not use automatic defrost freezers. They raise the temperature to get rid of the frost and destroy the food in the process. Furthermore I recommend chest freezers because the cold air stays in them rather than spilling out when you open them so they're more energy efficient.


Good point. We once bought a super efficient energy star chest freezer. It would not freeze meat and ruined plenty of food, even ice cream. Constantly heating up to defrost, then barely freezing again. Sold it at the yard sale the next spring and bought one more old used inefficient freezer with a big compressor and shelves with the tubing running through them. We usually have one empty when butchering so the meat freezes very fast, then it's transferred to the storage freezer. 

Our vacuum packed bacon has never gone bad in good freezers, for over a year.


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## Laura Workman (May 10, 2002)

duplicate post


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## Laura Workman (May 10, 2002)

Ronney said:


> I gather from your post that the first bacon you had back in September/October was good?


Hi Ronney, I see what you're saying, but actually, the bacon was nasty in September, too. That's why it's taken us nearly three months to use three packages. After that first package, we just weren't very anxious to open up another one. We normally go through about four pounds a month, and these are small, maybe 12-ounce packages. I mean, it's not so bad it will make you ill, it just tastes like it's pretty close to that. And it has right from the start. It just took a while for us to come to grips with the fact that it really is nasty.



mbosma said:


> OP: You are not alone
> 
> I just had my first pigs butchered Nov 1. Used the "highly" recommended butcher in town that everyone uses. The bacon has very little flavor and tastes a little like fish to me. I don't know what's going on, but I'm really dissapointed. One pig was a Poland China, the other was a Berkshire. The berk is a little better than the PC, but both taste blah compared to typical bacon from (ah-hem, exuse me) walmart.


 Ah, sadly, our bacon doesn't taste "blah." It tastes "blech."  Are you in Western Washington?



highlands said:


> Laura, this raises the question of what is the temperature of your freezer and also is it automatic defrost or manual defrost.
> 
> I strongly recommend that people not use automatic defrost freezers. They raise the temperature to get rid of the frost and destroy the food in the process. Furthermore I recommend chest freezers because the cold air stays in them rather than spilling out when you open them so they're more energy efficient.


 Hi Walter. That's an interesting thought. However, we have manual defrost chest freezers, as I learned long ago that they keep the best, most stable temperatures. We've kept meat in there for two years and it comes out tasting fine. In fact, we recently cooked pork chops from the pig I butchered over a year ago, and they were delish. I have some uncured belly from that pig, well wrapped in the freezer. I think maybe I'll try my hand at some homemade bacon!


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## lonelyfarmgirl (Feb 6, 2005)

PISH POSH! That woman was either blowing you a line, or she simply doesn't know any better. We have a retail meat store. Our meat keeps forever. We have eaten products stored for months and months and it's all fine. We ate bacon that was pushing a year that got lost in the back and it was fine. We are better about rotation now.

SOunds like they made a processing mistake and were using an excuse to cover them. The other possibility was the meat itself was bad for some reason.


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## Ronney (Nov 26, 2004)

Laura Jensen said:


> Hi Ronney, I see what you're saying, but actually, the bacon was nasty in September, too. That's why it's taken us nearly three months to use three packages. After that first package, we just weren't very anxious to open up another one. We normally go through about four pounds a month, and these are small, maybe 12-ounce packages. I mean, it's not so bad it will make you ill, it just tastes like it's pretty close to that. And it has right from the start. It just took a while for us to come to grips with the fact that it really is nasty.


Ok, Laura I hear what your saying too. And while I still stand by what I say, if your bacon was "off" right from the word go, that sheds a different light on it. As the rest of your pork appears to have been good it's safe to assume that the slaughterer did his job, took it straight to the butcher and the pig was immediately hung in the chiller. How long was the gap between picking up the fresh pork and picking up the bacon and ham? It should have been no more than 5-7 days. Unfortunately your orginal post is talking in months rather than days but if the meat for baconing hung around longer than this I would be going back and complaining. While what the lady is saying is correct, there is also a time frame involved and because often less salt and nitrates are involved with home-kill, that time frame becomes very important.

However, don't let it put you off. Hunt around for another butcher, they are out there. Sadly, my excellent butcher closes her doors on the 31st Dececember. She is 62, her back and shoulders are stuffed from butchering, she can't find good staff and she's calling it quits. She made bacon, ham and ham steaks to die for. She put up with what she called my "fiddley" cuts and made a ---- good job of them.

Cheers,
Ronnie


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## CarolT (Mar 12, 2009)

Local slaughterhouse makes both types of bacon and they told me it spoils faster in the fridge because of no nitrates but was supposed to last well in the freezer. 

I, too, think I would take a pack in and talk to them, maybe even cook some for then to taste right before I went. If they think it tastes fine, find another processor and let people in the area know you won't use them and why. Customer service is what they deal in and they should want you to be happy.

Sounds like they sell meat also? But one pack of bacon from someone else's pig and see how it is. 

BTW, if they start talking about taint, ask why _none_ of the rest of the pig has it. If it's taint, you have to wonder if someone else thinks everything but the bacon on their hog is ruined.... (i.e. they swapped meat on you)


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## jwal10 (Jun 5, 2010)

There are only 2 places within 100 miles of me that even make decent bacon. No one knows how anymore. Used to be they used lots of salt, nitrates and "liquid smoke". No one wants that anymore but want "that flavor". It takes a while to smoke good bacon and no one takes the time anymore. This fast bacon goes bad quick, especially if frozen. Like "mixed fat" hamburger. I don't eat much bacon anymore but when I do, I make my own....James

http://www.3men.com/bacon_making.htm


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## blaineiac (Jan 10, 2010)

The bacon is the fattiest cut of meat. the fat holds the taint. It is nasty. The boar I ate had very nice loins and I made a mild Salt, Pepper, ans Sage sausage with the rest. The bacon was aweful. I've cured my own many times and even though some comeout better than others, The boar bacon was the only thing I couldn't eat. I could smell it 3 hours after my GF cooked it . @ Laura: Was he cut or intact?


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## GBov (May 4, 2008)

Ed Norman said:


> The absorption of the cure is slowed by fat and skin. Usually a ham is injected to prevent bone spoil, so cure can work from inside out as well as outside in. If the bacons were tossed into brine to cure, it could be the fattiest areas went rancid before the cure reached them. On the other hand, I have made bacon with many different recipes and a few methods, and haven't made an inedible batch yet. Some were better than other. *My latest batch was perfect, and I am sticking to that method. *.


Do tell! I love making home made bacon but each batch turns out different lol.

And to the OP, we have frozen ham and bacon for many months with no loss of flavor. Take it back to them and say "Taste this!" and then get your money back!


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## Ed Norman (Jun 8, 2002)

GBov said:


> Do tell! I love making home made bacon but each batch turns out different lol.


I'm not the author or a paid spokesmodel, but I bought this book http://www.amazon.com/Home-Producti...6739/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1323999064&sr=8-1

We did our last three hogs with it last month, made hams, Boston butts, bacon, and quite a few sausage recipes. One was an old sow who mostly went into sausage so we had plenty to experiment with. And we had 55 pounds of bacons. Every recipe turned out great, it was all equal to or better than the best pre-mixed spice mixes we had bought in the past, and a whole bunch cheaper. The dry rub for the bacons was less in volume for 55 pounds than a pre-mixed spice mix used for 20 pounds, and it came out great. 

The guy weighs out his spices and I think that makes a big difference. He explains how different kinds of salt take up vastly different volumes but the same weight, and weight is what gives the taste. So if you use a cup of one kind of salt, it might contain the same saltiness as almost 2 cups of another kind. Weigh it out according to the amount of meat you have, and you get the right amount of saltiness no matter what kind you use. None of our meats came out salty at all, and I don't like stuff salty.


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## Laura Workman (May 10, 2002)

blaineiac said:


> The bacon is the fattiest cut of meat. the fat holds the taint. It is nasty. The boar I ate had very nice loins and I made a mild Salt, Pepper, ans Sage sausage with the rest. The bacon was aweful. I've cured my own many times and even though some comeout better than others, The boar bacon was the only thing I couldn't eat. I could smell it 3 hours after my GF cooked it . @ Laura: Was he cut or intact?


He was definitely cut. I've had to throw one boar's worth of meat to the dogs, and that was enough. Never again will I butcher an uncut boar.


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## matt_man (Feb 11, 2006)

I've had bacon in the freezer for over a year and it's still good - not as good as it was at first but definitely not dog food.

The nitrates (meat curing salt) makes up a small portion of the total salt used in curing but it is only necessary in preserving the pink color to cured meats. It shouldn't affect the meat not keeping.

We just had a younger boar butchered 2 weeks ago and the meat is excellent. He was breeding our sows 3 weeks before he was butchered also. Now, our old boar was definitely a stinky guy - but this one had no smell to him at all.


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## matt_man (Feb 11, 2006)

Ronney said:


> How long was the gap between picking up the fresh pork and picking up the bacon and ham? It should have been no more than 5-7 days.


The processor we normally use - it takes a month to get our cured meat back after we get the fresh.


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## highlands (Jul 18, 2004)

It normally takes about a month between fresh and smoke items like bacon and hams. There are several reasons:

1) The curing and smoking gets done in batches - Individuals could not afford to pay for their meat to get done all as its own batch unless they do a lot of meat. We do 300 lb to 600 lb batches at a time to get ours process all by itself.

2) It takes time to cure the meat in the brine or dry rub. Week to weeks.

3) It takes time to smoke.

4) Then the meat must be sliced and packaged.

A month between fresh and smoked is normal.

Cheers

-Walter
Sugar Mountain Farm
Pastured Pigs, Sheep & Kids
in the mountains of Vermont
Read about our on-farm butcher shop project:
http://SugarMtnFarm.com/butchershop
http://SugarMtnFarm.com/csa


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## Ed Norman (Jun 8, 2002)

In my new book it mentions the factories inject the hams and bacons, and then put them in a tumbler for a few hours. I guess the tumbling action moves the cure all around in a hurry and it is ready to smoke when done tumbling. I inject hams along the bone but then brine it for up to several weeks, depending on weight. Bacons get a dry rub and take 10-14 days to cure, then into the smoker.


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## 65284 (Sep 17, 2003)

Here is a recent thread on making bacon. http://www.homesteadingtoday.com/showthread.php?t=340097&highlight=luv2farm


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## bantams (Sep 7, 2003)

Who is your butcher? I think I might know - and what the problem is.

PM me!


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