Farmland Thin-Sliced European Streaky Bacon product reviews

This is our favourite bacon brand and we now buy it weekly. It was great when I was eating keto as it was handy in the smaller packs and I liked the home made flavour that didn't taste too processed and fake. Sadly my whole family switched onto it and one 125g pack is not enough for everyone as they are not one or two slice people. It is such good bacon!! We are gluten free and it is fab for us. We make our own bacon and egg muffin splits which taste just like the real thing, minus the plastic cheese. It is great in home made carbonara, you can almost imagine you are sitting in a restaurant in Rome, out on the piazza taking in the views. It is delicious with hollandaise sauce and poached eggs too. Our two favourite ways of cooking it are either pain fried or grilled in the oven. It crisps up nicely. We also like to put it in burgers to add extra flavour. The rashers are also great crisped up and you can use them as soldiers in a soft oil egg if you are eating low carb or keto and you can buy pass the bread. All in all, just delicious!

I have always loved bacon but I hardly buy it now as either I don't use up the whole packet and forget to pop the rest in the freezer or I forget to take it out of the freezer and forget that it is there for a while. My first impression of this was that it looks like there is going to be hardly any meat in the packet, it feels really small and like it wouldn't do much, however opening it up and seeing two packets of meat makes it feel like there is more than expected. I really like the fact the this is in two packets, I don't have to worry now about using half the packet and then forgetting the rest and having to dump the remainder.

The first packet I grabbed out because I had forgotten to buy meat for dinner with my friends and I had nothing else to use. I had made some potato soup and so cut this bacon up (so nice and easy compared to some I've tried) and then fried it till it had a nice crisp to it. After dishing out the soup, all who wanted then got a small portion of the bacon to add to their bowl. Not everyone wanted seconds of the soup but those who had had bacon the first round requested seconds, though sadly there was none left as it was happily in my tummy. Not having to rush to use the rest gave me time to think and in the end I settled for a tried and true meal. I cooked the bacon up and then added it and its oils (I didn't need to add any due to my frying pan) to mashed potato with a more than necessary helping of parmesan on top, this was delish!

I love that this comes in two handy packs, that alone is a selling point for me, throw in that it tastes nice either way we used it and I am sold.

Who doesn't love bacon? If you don't like bacon, then I certainly don't know why you are reading this review, so I can assume that you, the reader, enjoy bacon. But I am used to the usual Beehive or KIWI bacon varieties because it's what every single supermarket seem to stock and really push to the consumer. Other brands rarely get some good placement from the big boys. So I'm always happy to give different bacon varieties a try to help educate consumers without them before they spend their hard earned cash on the product.

What we have here is a thinly sliced European streaky bacon. The European style usually talks about where the cuts of bacon were taken from. American and New Zealand streaky bacon comes from the pork belly and is full of fat, whereas British and European cuts come from pork tenderloin or pork roast. This "back-bacon" generally has less fat and more meat.

The product comes in the form of two packets of bacon in a cardboard box. This is great as it helps with portion control for those that don't quite have the best will-power, and increases the shelf-life of the product, as the life of the second bag is completely independent of the first. The packets were very easy to open and had a minimal slime factor, which made them very easy to pick up and separate.

I fried the bacon in the pan because I didn't really have the time to wait or the oven to do the job. Interestingly, I found that the strips ended up shrinking a lot. And I do mean a lot. They reduced by about 20% in width and about 50% in length. Granted a 25% reduction in length might be more accurate as the shape of the bacon changed completely. No longer completely flat, the bacon compacted down into a very wavy shape. A bit like when you push the curtain open and the fabric bunches. This is probably the first time I have seen bacon curl in this way, but aesthetically it looks great and would work well in some gourmet burgers to prevent the cold salad bits from getting too warm and messy.

I found the compacting of the bacon also meant that the flavour was very strong too, and had a very high salt content. Some will love it, but others may not be so keen on it.

So there you have it. The bacon is cut from a meatier portion of the pig so it has less fat, and it cooks into a nice wavy pattern, and as a strong saltiness to it. Split into two packets, so it lasts longer, and does come in a nice box that makes stacking things in the fridge much easier than the usual bacon packet shape.

After trying this bacon and finding it absolutely amazingly tasty I was beyond excited to see it on sale today at my local New World supermarket for $4 as part as the weekly Wacky Wednesday special, of course, I purchased 2 packs as my pack received for review didn't last anywhere near long enough... this had nothing to do with the amount of bacon within the package which was generous with 2 separate 125gram packages perfect for when you don't need heaps of bacon all at once, a great way for keeping such a product fresh for longer!

The packaging itself was lovely and eye-catching and I particularly liked the use of the cardboard box outer rather than a full plastic outer, this made the product look a lot fancier on the shelf, of course, there was just the perfect sized 'viewing window' on the outside of the box so that you are able to see the exact product you are purchasing. Opening one of the individual plastic packages up I was met with a lovely smokey, rich bacon aroma, and was well impressed by the thin cut style of the bacon, while my Mother-In-Law who was with me at the time commented that she didn't think she would like it due to this factor for the fact she thought it may crisp too much (she likes her bacon soft), I was thinking in a whole opposite view of how many more possibilities this bacon would open being thinly sliced.

The first way which I intended to use the bacon was to wrap the bacon in some chicken breasts stuffed with spinach, sundried tomatoes, and camembert cheese. I wrapped each breast in 2 slices of the bacon and I was well impressed with the way in which the bacon held it's position on the chicken without needing to be secured at all, this was in my opinion purely due to the thickness of the bacon, and something I really appreciated. I baked the meal in the oven for 40 minutes and once cooked the bacon was just how I left it but beautifully golden in colour. This cooking method was perfect for the bacon and the flavours were amazing, just the right great bacon taste without overpowering the other flavours.

Next up I decided to use some of the bacon to make a bacon and egg pie for dinner. I decided to dice up and fry a pack of the bacon for this dish before adding to my beaten egg mixture so that more of the bacon flavours were released during the frying process, the aroma was amazing and I had to stop Miss 6 sneaking pieces as they cooked. I added the bacon with some grated cheese to the pie and popped it in the oven to cook. The taste was amazing and the bacon was a hit throughout which the whole family absolutely loved!

Without a doubt this is one of the best kinds of bacon I have tried, I will definitely purchase more (again) in the future, especially when wanting to create something with the thinner sliced bacon.

I did like the presentation of this product. The cardboard outer indicates that there is 250g of bacon inside, but when I opened it I discovered that there were two 125g packs included, each sealed in its own plastic bag, so if the whole packet is not needed at once, the remainder can be safely stored for another time. There were nine thin slices in the packet I opened, so I thought we would comfortably manage to eat them all. I was later proved right - this was exactly the right quantity for two people.

I had plans to try all sorts of weird and exotic things once I had the bacon unpacked, but I had to start with the traditional breakfast. It is hard to beat bacon with egg and a perfectly fresh bread product. I had some brioches in the cupboard; these little buns are ideal with a good quality bacon because they are naturally sweet, almost like a cross between bread and a cake. So I looked no further; we opened one of the two sealed packs of bacon and shared the contents. I believe I could become a confirmed breakfast eater if I were able to eat this product every morning.

The flavour is beautiful - not too salty, not too fatty, but with just enough of both to ensure that there is a rich, smoky bacon flavour. I took some out of the pan when it was just cooked and left the remainder to crisp a bit more. It was hard to tell which way was better; they were both delicious. I cooked an egg apiece in the pan; there was just enough residual grease to allow the eggs to cook without sticking, and they emerged with a pleasant aftertaste of wood smoke and spices. In fact, this was a breakfast that would be difficult to surpass!

We used the second packet to try a couple of other possibilities. We were having a mixed salad for lunch that day, so I cooked four rashers till they were crisp and we broke them over the salad bowl. This added crunch to the vegetables and also gave them a wonderful rich flavour. The remaining rashers were used to decorate a bowl of hummus and avocado dip. We cooked them and cut each one into four, then spread them across the dip in an octagonal shape. That was not quite so successful - at first, they looked brilliant, but then people started to fish them out and eat them! Clearly, they tasted even better than they looked.