bacon

The Co-operative bacon

Guaranteeing you British bacon  

All our own brand standard bacon is made using pork from British pigs reared to our strict welfare standards. As the only one of the top five retailers to ensure that all of our own brand bacon is British, we are leading the way in promoting British and local meats.

 You can rest assured that;

• we use the Red Tractor or Quality Pork mark farm assurance standards to guarantee healthy pigs with high welfare standards.
•  All our own brand bacon comes from British reared pigs  

What makes our Bacon Truly Irresistible?

To make sure that our Truly Irresistible bacon meets your expectations for flavour, quality and high animal welfare we have worked hard to ensure;

• All our Truly Irresistible bacon come from farms inspected and approved by Freedom Foods, to welfare standards laid down by the RSPCA 
• The pigs are sired by a pure bred Hampshire boar 
• The pigs spend the first half of their life outdoors and are then transferred to naturally lit barns with deep straw bedding.  

What is Freedom Food? Find out more here

We treat our Truly Irresistible bacon in two different ways to bring out different flavours.

Dry Cure; The process we use dates back to the 1890’s and the traditions of those days are maintained to ensure that a premium quality bacon is produced. A special blend of ingredients (cure) and sea salt is hand rubbed into the meat, allowing it to naturally penetrate the pork with the preservatives. The product is then air dried to remove natural water so that the bacon is full of flavour.

Wiltshire; The traditional Wiltshire curing process dates back to the 1840’s.  With this process, the meat is immersed for a few days in a special brine that contains useful salt tolerant bacteria.  These bacteria generate the flavour that is associated with Wiltshire bacon.  The time within this special brine allows the flavour and cure to penetrate the meat. The bacon is then air dried to allow natural water content to be lost, so that the flavour intensifies.

Find some delcious British bacon recipes on our recipe pages