Bacon Brands

It’s hard to overstate just how delicious bacon is. Even if you’re a vegetarian, our bet is the hardest thing to give up was bacon. Even if you’re vegetarian and have never tried bacon, trust us, the hardest choice you’ve made unconsciously perhaps is never trying bacon.

Bacon satisfies our desires on a salt, sweet and fat level. It’s a very amenable food source, can be fashioned into a variety of things and served in a multitude of ways. You can also combine bacon with nearly everything to give an extra flavor boost. All in all, a fantastic piece of sustenance.

It should come as no surprise that bacon brands are plentiful. However, like anything, a handful rise to the top – Farmland, Hormel Black Label, Oscar Mayer, No Name and Wright. When it comes to a general fat to meat ratio, the goal for the consumer is more meat, less fat. From a visual perspective, most bacon companies pack their bacon in a similar format. Typically displayed sideways and in layers, the objective here is making the bacon appear meatier than it is. Oscar Mayer is a master at this, displaying only the meatiest of sides and nearly hiding all the fat from plain sight.

However, the most meat (bang) for your buck comes from none other than Oscar Mayer and closely followed by Hormel Black Label and Farmland. Keep this in mind folks when making that oh so important bacon purchase. Second, let’s talk shrinkage. Like spinach, bacon comes in big and quickly loses its size. It suffers a similar fate as spinach, but some worse than others. Of these leading brands, No Name shrinks the most, going from 12 inches in pre-cooked length to just 7.75 cooked. The best performer is Farmland, reducing by only 29% (10.5 to 7.5).

Moving on, we’re turning our focus now to the infamous “salty” category. One might think that anything too salty is bad, and very little salt, not so flavorful. But with bacon the saltiness should be in proportion to the flavor of the piece. So, one could have a pleasant experience with very salty bacon so long as the meat flavor complements it correctly. Of the top dogs (pigs), No Name is generally the least salty (most bland) while Farmland is a salt lover’s paradise.

Lastly, we’re going to talk flavor robustness. This is sort of the overall score, rounding out which brands are the most flavorful which speaks to the complex interplay of salt, smokiness and texture. A hard score to gather but the pervading king, at least among message boards and online food reviews is Farmland.

There you have it, a tight review of bacon brands and their corresponding grades. Now it’s up to you to see if your taste-buds agree.  

For more bacon brands, check out: Riffbuddy - Bacon Brands.