I made Turkey Bacon
This was my prototype batch. I wouldn't change much, some minor tweaks to my process but otherwise it turned out great and was well received.
You could make this at home easily.
Ingredients are salt, brown sugar, garlic powder, sage powder, sodium erythorbate and cure #1.
18 replies
This looks great. I wouldn't typically go for turkey bacon but honestly, if I saw this at my local butcher and they'd made it by hand, you bet I'd be taking some home.
And inb4 "why don't you just eat real bacon": I don't typically eat pork because in the UK, pigs are typically very intensively farmed (in e.g. farrowing crates) and slaughtered inhumanely (using CO2 suffocation). Unless you have a good butcher you can trust with a traceable supply chain and who uses a less inhumane abattoir, it's very hard to get pork that's not had a truly horrible life.
Poultry / fowl generally have a less bad life in the UK if (big "if") you get them from a good butcher. We still intensively farm birds but it's quite a bit easier to get higher welfare fowl from supermarkets or butchers. That's not to say that all fowl is "ethical", but it's easier to do so, in my experience.
Did ya... *ahem* ...gobble it all up?
Made BLT sandwiches for staff lunch. The rest is going home to my boss' wife.
I hope that's not coming out of your pocket. Well, unless this is how you angle for that long-overdue raise you deserve - in which case, it's worth the investment.
I was given a sizeable raise this past spring.
This was company meat. After Thanksgiving I'm buying a whole turkey to make pepperoni sticks for my nieces. If they want I'll make a slab of this for them too.
I feel like your recipe might be missing something...
Missing what?
This was my first attempt ever. I mentioned process tweaks and I'll elaborate here I would use more mechanical processing to optimize protein extraction and thus binding so it doesn't separate when sliced and cooked. Otherwise it has the texture of real bacon and delicious turkey flavour.
I can add smoke but it's typically not included in a health-conscious turkey strip where I live.
I'm legitimately curious, don't leave me hangit bro.
Sorry for the cliffhanger. And I get it's kind of obvious. But your ingredient list is missing turkey :).
Was it breast, thigh, how was it cut? Kind of looks like maybe large chunks of thigh, mixed with the spices and chilled, then sliced thin?
Equal weight thigh and breast meat, approximately 1" cubes but then seasoned, cured and vac sealed so they may elongate beyond an inch. Cured for a week then sous vide cooked to 145 F internal. Ice bath, room temp bloomed for 30 minutes then frozen until solid enough to slice at "12" on the meat slicer.
From my client, the description stops after the ingredient list. So it kind of reads like add these spices to turkey and then MAGIC
It's a prototype, I'm not ready to share the full measurements and process quite yet. Give me a couple weeks and the next iteration will be reproducible.
The journey is the joy.
Erdogan: All your
basebacon belongs to us!That's Türkiye, you turkey. 🤪
Why?
It's a popular product that is difficult to source reliably. Making it in house solves that, saves cost and produces a higher quality result we can charge a premium on.
I'm just messing with you. Good work.
I've never driven myself to try the abomination but i support your choice to live healthy.
Hey I get it. I'm a retail butcher which means I value true pork bacon but also means I have to make stuff like this. I'd rather be the guy making it than sourcing it, I have control over quality and flavour.