10 Bacon Brands to AVOID — And 4 That Butchers Actually Buy

🔗 Save Money On Meat With My Complete Butcher’s Method I teach: https://frankmillerbutcher.com You flip over a package of bacon, see a front label covered in words like natural and uncured, and assume someone has already done the checking for you. Nine times out of ten, the first ingredient after pork is water. In this one I walk through 10 red flags I look for on a bacon label, from injected water and sodium phosphate to smoke flavoring that never met real wood, and ingredient lists running eight, ten, twelve items long for something as simple as cured pork belly. I explain why uncured is a legal requirement rather than a promise, and why celery powder cures meat through the same pathway as the synthetic version. A longtime customer of mine, Yvonne, cooked her usual package next to a dry cured sample I gave her and weighed both. The water injected one lost nearly double the weight percentage in the pan. Then I give you the four things professional butchers and small producers actually look for: a true dry cure, an ingredient list you can count on one hand, real wood smoking, and traceability back to a specific farm. I'm honest about the money too. That kind of bacon usually runs $10 to $16 a pound against $6 to $8 for mainstream, though the cooked yield closes that gap by as much as a third. If you're tired of paying bacon prices for water weight, this is the breakdown I'd want you to have before your next grocery run. CHAPTERS: 00:00 – Water Is The First Ingredient 01:10 – Red Flag #1: Added Water 02:39 – Red Flag #2: Sodium Phosphate 04:04 – Too Many Ingredients 05:24 – The Natural Label Trick 06:43 – Fake Smoke Flavoring 07:58 – Sugar High On The List 09:14 – The Cooked Yield Test 10:32 – None Of This Is Illegal 11:49 – What Butchers Buy Instead 13:10 – Real Wood Smoke Matters 14:28 – Where To Find It 15:45 – What Good Bacon Costs 17:05 – Mistakes Shoppers Keep Making 18:19 – What Really Bothers Me 19:38 – My Final Butcher Advice #Bacon #BaconBrands #Butcher #ButcherTips #MeatLabels #DryCuredBacon #UncuredBacon #GroceryTips #PorkBelly #FoodLabels