The Truth About Why We Eat Bacon For Breakfast | Food History

Did you know that bacon wasn’t always a breakfast food in America? In this video, I'm delving into the early 1900s - when breakfast for many Americans was little more than a piece of toast - and a man called Edward Bernays changed the course of breakfast and food history forever.

Bernays, who famously transformed "propaganda" into what we now call "PR," used groundbreaking techniques inspired by his uncle, Sigmund Freud, to change how the public thought and behaved. And in the 1920s, when the Beech-Nut Packing Company wanted to sell more bacon, Bernays stepped in with a genius plan to re-brand bacon as a healthy breakfast food for Americans.

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00:00 – Intro
00:40 – Curing bacon
01:41 – American breakfast
03:37 – Smoking bacon
04:32 – English breakfast
05:58 – Cooking bacon
06:55 – Tasting

Recipe:
Mix 250g salt, 250g brown sugar, and black pepper in a small bowl. Coat a 2kg pork belly evenly with the mixture and place it in an airtight plastic bag and refrigerate for 7 days, flipping every day. After curing, rinse and pat dry. Smoke at 80°C for 2-3 hours, placing it on a rack over ice to keep it cool. Insert a probe to monitor the internal temperature, and smoke until it reaches 66°C. Remove, cool, wrap in clingfilm, and refrigerate for 30-60 minutes to firm the meat. Slice the bacon to your desired thickness.

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Image Credits:
British Library
Creative Commons
British Council
Internet Archive

[emitrack]

Great video, I can feel you'll make it big eventually like Max Miller! It's just a matter of the algorithm pushing your videos for more exposure now, keep it up and you'll probably make it eventually.

[ShellyS]

So, what you're saying is, sometimes bacon is just a cigar...

[brookechang]

This is an interesting cultural take, too. There are a few places I can think of in Asia where the idea of a particular food only being eaten at certain times of day is weird. (Needless to say, "breakfast for supper" is far less of a novelty there.)

[KC-gyxw]

I think I had that vacuum sealer - did you get your's from Lidl, by any chance?? I cannot live without it! Saves all the veg and fruit in season, meat. stocks of bags of the right size for stew and soup (and cake) of pumpkins, beautiful apples for crumble and cakes, meat and fish seasoned and marinated right through; stored in the freezer with no burn, and defrosting means no drips or smells in the fridge.

I RAVE about vacuum sealers!!

BTW, making a celery cake next week. Hmm, not sure about that but hey, mum will give it a try...