Protein in bacon


#21

Ooohh… now that is truly lovely bacon !

I don´t find that fatty bacon too often but when I do, I buy a lot and freeze the rest. Most pork is sadly low fat these days…

I often eat bacon with some salad,pour the liquid fat on the salad as dressing. Maybe some vinegar. Yummy!


(Robin) #22

My grandmother used to make “wilted lettuce” salad… with bacon grease and vinegar.


#23

My condolences for people in countries where that is the case.
I can even choose how fatty pork belly I want, well it can’t be lean, of course… But there are other cuts for that. But pork in general? Between 0 and 100% visible fat, we have everything and there aren’t gaps. I want to eat lean, I eat pork (basically the only good carnivore option for me. I dislike lean proteins in general but some nice mildly fatty pork cuts work to some extent. it took some training though). I want to eat fatty, I eat pork. I want a fat fast day (90% fat), I eat pork*, no added fat is needed though I prefer having a tiny butter snack on those days. Butter is awesome.

*I buy the fattiest pork I still enjoy for those days. Smoked cooked pork jowl, 98% fat (86% in weight according to the label). Good stuff. Mine is probably a tad lower as I try to buy the meatiest pieces available. It’s still almost pure fat tissue but a tasty one. And the tiny meaty streak makes all the difference. Another way I can eat this fatty (well, almost… it’s always meatier than pork jowl) is scratchings (I don’t know a term for the meatier kind, we use the same word in Hungary, no matter if it has skin or meat), one of the best snacks ever. I can’t eat enough of it as I can’t use up much lard and it produces plenty. Whenever I need to trim my too fatty pork, the fatty parts become scratchings. Yum!

Sounds good and I never was one to eat salads. I eat meat now (unlike in my occasionally salad eating times) but don’t eat salads anymore so I can’t try it but sounds really good indeed (if one likes salads). My rare salads involved warm fat and frying too and bacon may be even tastier than onion and cucchini though I am not sure, they are super tasty vegs when fried well. Depends on one’s preferences at the moment I suppose. And the taste of the bacon, they aren’t the same, after all.


(Joey) #24

Too bad, having to put up with the lettuce. :wink:


#25

This is a different cut but the salad has the same the idea. Fat as dressing.

I can still find reasonable bacon and some other fatty parts, but because pigs are being fed the way they are, wheat and corn etc, they do not produce much fat. There are still some people buying fatty meat… I don´t know for how long though,low fat madness is getting crazier each day.

As is obesity and diabetes. Looking at my salad, I´m obviously trying to avoid both.


(Bob M) #26

I think it’s animal husbandry. The pig farmers have been breeding the fat out of pigs. A lot of the farms that don’t mass produce pigs use “heritage” pigs. Here’s where I order half a pig when I can afford it:

This is what they say:

And then it gets more complex, because some pigs are bred for bacon, others for something else, but the gigantic farms breed large pigs that are lighter on fat.


#27

Your plate looks very good!
Pigs are quite fatty here normally but Mangalica is very trendy now, that is on another level… But most cuts from normal pigs are fatty, more or less, it varies a lot, that’s why I can’t track my fat intake with a decent accuracy but I can guess. Sometimes I track leaner pork shoulder as chuck, sometimes I track fatty pork loin as chuck :smiley: Chuck is my fav and in the middle, I can tell if something is about as fatty as the average pork chuck I ever had, let’s hope that the data for it isn’t too far from that :wink:
There are lean cuts but only the light pork loin is really lean. Green ham can be pretty lean but most slabs have a decent fat layer. There is a rare expensive lean cut but the rest are fatty, more or less. I avoid the very fatty kind (I talk about fresh meat here, smoked is another matter but if I buy something from the farmer’s market, that’s usually smoked pork loin as I love the marbling and I prefer my meat having lots of actual meat) but there is a huge variety. Pork belly is just one option, there are ribs and side bacon, they are always very fatty… Pork shoulder is very fatty and even trimming can’t “help” to a great extent as the meat itself isn’t lean. But yes, it drops the fattiness a lot, no idea how much. I just feel the meat isn’t lean at all. A pig mostly produces fatty meat and less lean meat - and even those have very tempting fat layers, usually. I love pork loin now but I dislike it if it’s lean. I remember it being lean when I was a child too, people used it for making breaded schnitzel (it was basically THE main dish for Sunday, it’s extremely popular since ages. never liked it so much and now I know why, it’s too lean and too carby for me. yes it soaks up fat but added fat doesn’t help with lean meat if one is me)… But now it comes in bigger slabs and it almost always includes the nice fat layer I like so much. I just roast it in one piece, maybe two if I manage to buy a big one, I am not very patient and a big one needs more than 2 hours… :slight_smile: Lean but tender, juicy meat with an impressive enough fat layer on it? Perfect for a roast! So I simply always do it with pork loin. I use green ham and pork shoulder, the cheapest cuts for almost everything else. Pork loin and chuck get the VIP treatment, they are my big favs. The fattier part of green ham is wonderful fried, the leftover lean stuff is for other things though hungry me totally enjoys a small piece or two. Like meatballs, I put enough fatty pork skin (already cooked into softness) into it and everything is cut into so tiny pieces that the leanness of the green ham can’t be noticed anymore. I can feed lean meat to my SO too as he only likes those, up to pork chuck (but I better eat the fattier parts there too). Pork chuck was where our tastes met originally. He dislikes anything fattier, I disliked anything leaner… But it turned out my leaner favs taste wonderful and with the right fat layer, they are good. Maybe some lean parts are left but I have ways to handle those.

I can write about pork forever. I did it so much in carnivore threads but I never feel I am done. I feel lucky, as affordable (close to the cheapest possible), healthy and tasty aren’t in conflict when it comes to my food. Oh and available too.


(FRANK) #28

Does it really matter? If your bacon has little protein in it, just eat more. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:


(KCKO, KCFO 🥥) #29

That was the salad dressing I grew up with as well.


(B Creighton) #30

I buy only uncured, unsweetened bacon(Usually Simple Truth Kroger brand), which I know has not been fed ractopamine, because it is produced in Canada where RTP is banned. Nevertheless, it is much leaner than that pictured with at least twice the meat. I don’t eat it for its protein, but as a flavorful additive to my eggs. Otherwise, I typically use sun dried tomatoes in EVOO on my eggs. Either way it’s yummy.


#31

Oh yes I’ve been doing sundried tomatoes with my eggs recently and it’s so yummy. I learned to dehydrate my own romas and I pack them in olive oil with some S&P, fresh basil and fresh rosemary. The oil afterwards is so tasty to cook with too. I also dehydrate my own Georgia grown vidalia onions and those added to the eggs are also eye-roll worthy. Lil’ bite of sweet onion and tart tomato is so yummy and you don’t need much to make the eggs delicious.


(B Creighton) #32

You are after my heart aren’t you? I wish I could say mine was as good as yours - I buy them at Costco… but they are good, and I’m lucky to be able to get them there. I may start growing my own maters though.


(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #33

Bacon%20salad


(Priya Dogra) #34

Nice, thanks. I’ll try this in the coming weekend.