Beef bacon

[tonhou]

We recently had a steer killed and processed and had some beef bacon cured.
We had a change of butcher - our previous one suggested that using the sirloin would be best for bacon, however the current one said that was too good and he actually used the brisket.
Does anyone have recommendations on which cuts make good bacon?

--Tony

[ladena]

I hope someone has some good answers because I've been curious about beef bacon for a while.

[kansasdexters]

We tried beef bacon one time and we didn't like it at all! Here was the problem: our beef carcass is hung and dry-aged for a couple of weeks and this intensifies the flavor of the fat as well as the meat. In contrast, pork is not "aged", so its fat does not acquire any "aged" flavor. When aged beef is smoked and cured to make beef bacon, the lean part ends up tasting like beef jerky and the fat part tastes like tallow to me -- yuck! We only had one customer that liked it and he ended up buying almost all of it. Never again!

Patti

[tonhou]

Things might be done differently down under - I am very happy with the flavour of the bacon, what I am wondering of those who do beef bacon is which cuts have been tried and found to be most suitable.

--Tony

[carragheendexters]

Hi Tony,
I have never heard of beef bacon nor ever seen it for sale in Australia. I just can't even imagine what it would be like.
We do a lot of corned/pumped beef, something we really like, but never smoked and cured.
Next time we do a beast I'll have to ask the butcher if he can do some. Now you have me curious.

[dexterfarm]

agreed Patti we tried some dexter beef bacon. I wanted to try it to see if it was something we wanted to do with ours. I am glad I tried it before I paid good money to turn our beef into that. Not saying that the results from every processor would be the same.

[lavacaw]

We have made our own cured/smoked pork bacon. Think I will have them hold out a brisket to try it with beef. Sounds really interesting.