BRINGING HOME THE BACON
Posted: 17 Apr 2026, 01:39
BRINGING HOME THE BACON
31 May 2002
Writing about bacon last week has triggered off a lot of memories for me and I suspect that this offering might make one or two other mouths water as well! Apologies to the vegetarians. The starting point is the picture which shows eight rolls of bacon and eight hams hung up in the kitchen at Cyril Richardson’s farm at Little Stainton in 1976. As if that wasn’t enough, if you look carefully, there are some trays of eggs on the draining board. In case any of you are wondering where the shoulders are, they have been rolled into the sides with the middle cut. When I ran the grocer’s shop at Sough and we ordered our bacon from the Vale of Mowbray bacon factory at Leeming Bar in North Yorkshire these were always described as ‘spencers’. I don’t suppose this happens much now, the pigs were born, raised, fed, killed and made into bacon on the farm. The surplus was sold but there was always some bacon or ham kept back to ensure a constant supply at home.
Some of the younger ones will be wondering how this picture can be accurate before refrigeration. They all know that bacon from the supermarket goes bad if it’s not kept in the fridge and even in there, it goes off within a week once opened. I’m sorry to have to tell you that even though the supermarket calls it bacon, it is nothing like what you see hung up in this kitchen. Covered in muslin to keep the flies off and hung in a draught this bacon and ham has an almost unlimited life with no need for a fridge.
Let me take you through the process of making good bacon. First of all you rear the right pig. These sides are from English Large Whites crossed with Landrace. This gives a long pig with medium fat thickness which grows well. Different breeds gave different bacon both in the proportion of meat to fat and the taste as well. A Tamworth is a stronger taste, a Wessex Saddleback gives a big pig but a lot of back fat and so on. Then you feed the pig on good grub, swill, barley meal and milk. You let them run free so they are scavenging in the fields and picking up herbs and whatever they can find in the soil, they grow far bigger than a commercial pig today, about 20 score is a good weight. (A ‘score’ is twenty pounds so this means a 400 pound pig.) The reason why commercial pigs are killed younger is that their efficiency in converting food to body weight falls off after about three or four months and they become less profitable. They also have less flavour because they haven’t matured.
Once the pig has reached its weight the travelling slaughter man calls in and the pig is stunned with a captive bolt pistol and then bled by cutting its throat, the blood is collected in a clean bucket, it will be used with oatmeal and spices to make black puddings. Once bled the pig is washed with boiling water and scraped to get the bristles off it. In Warwickshire where I learned my farming they did it slightly differently, once killed and bled the pig was laid on a bed of clean wheat straw and covered with more straw. This was fired and burned the bristles off. Then it was turned over and the other side treated the same way before it was scrubbed with boiling water.
The carcass was then hung up and after the intestines and internal organs have been taken out it was hung overnight to let the flesh set. The following day it was split down the centre and divided up into the sides and hams. Other parts like the spare ribs, the head and the trotters were used fresh, there was always pig meat for tea on killing day! Once the joints had set they were laid out on slabs in the cellar and salt rubbed into them. This process of rubbing salt in and turning the joints carried on for a month or six weeks until the person curing it was satisfied it was properly preserved. The only other chemical that was used was a bit of nitrate pushed down into the joint of the bone in the ham, this ensured that the centre of the ham kept sweet. Once cured, the sides were boned and rolled and then hung up to dry, when dry they were sewn into their muslin jackets and there you have it, old fashioned home-cured bacon. The bone was left in the ham.
So how does this differ from the supermarket variety? It kept well without refrigeration. To modern eyes it would seem very fatty, we always used to say that bacon fat was white meat. A big difference would be noticed when you fried it, there would be none of the white froth that comes out of modern bacon. This froth is all the chemicals and water that has been used to pickle it. Real bacon didn’t shrink as much in the pan and the fat was a delight, just the thing to put on the bread used for your bacon buttie! Above all, it smelled like bacon when you cooked it and tasted like it when you ate it!
Of course, it cost more to make and would be very expensive compared with the modern variety but it was so much better. As for the hams, if you’ve never tasted properly cured and matured home-fed ham you haven’t lived, it tastes as good raw as cooked! Add a couple of eggs from hens that have spent their lives eating good food and scratching about for insects, worms and whatever else they could find or fancied and you have a meal fit for a king!
I realise that the vegetarians among my readers will have recoiled in disgust by now. A lot of the meat eaters will have joined them, they don’t like to know where their food has come from. I apologise but I come from a generation that had a very clear sight of these things, we liked our food and many a time we had to kill and prepare it ourselves. I don’t think this makes me a worse person and I’m sure it means that I was better fed. Could this be the reason why I’m so healthy in my old age?
31 May 2002
31 May 2002
Writing about bacon last week has triggered off a lot of memories for me and I suspect that this offering might make one or two other mouths water as well! Apologies to the vegetarians. The starting point is the picture which shows eight rolls of bacon and eight hams hung up in the kitchen at Cyril Richardson’s farm at Little Stainton in 1976. As if that wasn’t enough, if you look carefully, there are some trays of eggs on the draining board. In case any of you are wondering where the shoulders are, they have been rolled into the sides with the middle cut. When I ran the grocer’s shop at Sough and we ordered our bacon from the Vale of Mowbray bacon factory at Leeming Bar in North Yorkshire these were always described as ‘spencers’. I don’t suppose this happens much now, the pigs were born, raised, fed, killed and made into bacon on the farm. The surplus was sold but there was always some bacon or ham kept back to ensure a constant supply at home.
Some of the younger ones will be wondering how this picture can be accurate before refrigeration. They all know that bacon from the supermarket goes bad if it’s not kept in the fridge and even in there, it goes off within a week once opened. I’m sorry to have to tell you that even though the supermarket calls it bacon, it is nothing like what you see hung up in this kitchen. Covered in muslin to keep the flies off and hung in a draught this bacon and ham has an almost unlimited life with no need for a fridge.
Let me take you through the process of making good bacon. First of all you rear the right pig. These sides are from English Large Whites crossed with Landrace. This gives a long pig with medium fat thickness which grows well. Different breeds gave different bacon both in the proportion of meat to fat and the taste as well. A Tamworth is a stronger taste, a Wessex Saddleback gives a big pig but a lot of back fat and so on. Then you feed the pig on good grub, swill, barley meal and milk. You let them run free so they are scavenging in the fields and picking up herbs and whatever they can find in the soil, they grow far bigger than a commercial pig today, about 20 score is a good weight. (A ‘score’ is twenty pounds so this means a 400 pound pig.) The reason why commercial pigs are killed younger is that their efficiency in converting food to body weight falls off after about three or four months and they become less profitable. They also have less flavour because they haven’t matured.
Once the pig has reached its weight the travelling slaughter man calls in and the pig is stunned with a captive bolt pistol and then bled by cutting its throat, the blood is collected in a clean bucket, it will be used with oatmeal and spices to make black puddings. Once bled the pig is washed with boiling water and scraped to get the bristles off it. In Warwickshire where I learned my farming they did it slightly differently, once killed and bled the pig was laid on a bed of clean wheat straw and covered with more straw. This was fired and burned the bristles off. Then it was turned over and the other side treated the same way before it was scrubbed with boiling water.
The carcass was then hung up and after the intestines and internal organs have been taken out it was hung overnight to let the flesh set. The following day it was split down the centre and divided up into the sides and hams. Other parts like the spare ribs, the head and the trotters were used fresh, there was always pig meat for tea on killing day! Once the joints had set they were laid out on slabs in the cellar and salt rubbed into them. This process of rubbing salt in and turning the joints carried on for a month or six weeks until the person curing it was satisfied it was properly preserved. The only other chemical that was used was a bit of nitrate pushed down into the joint of the bone in the ham, this ensured that the centre of the ham kept sweet. Once cured, the sides were boned and rolled and then hung up to dry, when dry they were sewn into their muslin jackets and there you have it, old fashioned home-cured bacon. The bone was left in the ham.
So how does this differ from the supermarket variety? It kept well without refrigeration. To modern eyes it would seem very fatty, we always used to say that bacon fat was white meat. A big difference would be noticed when you fried it, there would be none of the white froth that comes out of modern bacon. This froth is all the chemicals and water that has been used to pickle it. Real bacon didn’t shrink as much in the pan and the fat was a delight, just the thing to put on the bread used for your bacon buttie! Above all, it smelled like bacon when you cooked it and tasted like it when you ate it!
Of course, it cost more to make and would be very expensive compared with the modern variety but it was so much better. As for the hams, if you’ve never tasted properly cured and matured home-fed ham you haven’t lived, it tastes as good raw as cooked! Add a couple of eggs from hens that have spent their lives eating good food and scratching about for insects, worms and whatever else they could find or fancied and you have a meal fit for a king!
I realise that the vegetarians among my readers will have recoiled in disgust by now. A lot of the meat eaters will have joined them, they don’t like to know where their food has come from. I apologise but I come from a generation that had a very clear sight of these things, we liked our food and many a time we had to kill and prepare it ourselves. I don’t think this makes me a worse person and I’m sure it means that I was better fed. Could this be the reason why I’m so healthy in my old age?
31 May 2002