Smoked Streaky Beef Bacon (nitrate-free)

Paleo Robbie's own in-house made free-range & wood smoked streaky beef bacon.... and completely nitrate-free! Wood smoked with sustainable German beechwood chips and cured in a brine with organic unrefined palm sugar and spices. Streaky means it has layers of fat vs a lean bacon which has much less bacon and you might want to add tallow (or evoo, ghee, etc) when pan-frying. Antibiotic and HGP free. Normally bacon needs to have nitrates for safety and for the curing process to complete, however since Paleo Robbie's bacon is flash frozen we use freezing as the preservation method and thus we don't need any nitrates. Not even natural nitrates from celery juice :). ===== How we make nitrate-free bacon Nitrates have gotten a bad rep as commercial bacons use too much of it mainly to accelerate the curing process. We worked with several artisan butchers since 2013 to make a nothing artificial, all natural and minimum nitrate traditional bacon, but our in-house chefs are now also making a full nitrate-free bacon. In full disclosure we need to mention that we are talking nitrate-free in the terms of no added sodium nitrates or nitrites. We use absolutely no curing salts or additives in the process. There is however a very low amount of naturally occurring nitrates. Sea salt contains natural nitrates but on a minuscule level of around 1 part per million. There is also naturally occurring nitrates in black pepper and chili pepper. However, the amount is not even 1/10th a gram per kg of meat. 1 kg of dried chili contains around 574mg of nitrates, 1 kg of black pepper contains around 438mg per kg (recommended ADI for a 60kg individual is 220mg per day). In summary, these are very insignificant amounts and can be labeled nitrate-free. After we receive beef belly (aka navel brisket) from our free range farm in Ratchaburi, we slice them into thin strips which are then cured in a brine with the following ingredients: evaporated sea salt, unrefined organic palm sugar, black pepper and chili powder. After 5 days of curing, the bacon is rinsed, blast frozen and vacuum packed. The amount of palm sugar absorbed by the meat is less than 1% of net weight. The taste is slightly more 'meaty' compared to traditional bacon.