Duchy Originals

Unsmoked Back Bacon

Happy pigs make the best bacon. We really believe it.
Many of us are out of touch with our food – particularly meat. Often we don’t know – or prefer not to think about – how it ended up on our plates.

Our philosophy of animal husbandry is that if you treat them right and give them a great life, then you shouldn’t feel bad about eating them. So, before we tell you about our organic back bacon, we’d like to tell you about our pigs.

At Home Farm we keep two bloodlines: Duroc, which are brown and carry quite a lot of fat, and Large White-Landrace crosses, which are pink and have floppy and pointed ears respectively. We cross-bred these two bloodlines to create truly lovely pigs – inquisitive, playful, surprisingly intelligent creatures that like to spend their time rooting around and causing mischief.
With their Duroc heritage, they are fattier than other pigs, which is great for two reasons: it helps make tastier meat and it means they don’t feel the cold as much as leaner commercial breeds. It does also mean that they produce less meat per animal, but that’s the kind of sacrifice you have to make if you want the best bacon.

Our bacon is cured by Denhay, a company employing 30 skilled bacon-makers in the South West. Using a traditional cure blend, they air dry the back meat carefully for two weeks. Not only does this guarantee a great taste, it means your bacon won’t shrink or fill the pan with water.

It’s also worth mentioning what they don’t do: no injecting the meat with water to bulk it up, no mechanical shaping of the meat, and no freezing to prolong its shelf life.

The result – crisp, flavoursome bacon – honest food in the most literal sense.