How to Make Imitation Bacon

Everyone true American loves bacon, every American has the God-given right to wake up to the delicious smell of bacon at least a few times a month. We have done videos recently showing you how to inject or brine bacon and one on how to make dry-rubbed bacon at home. Another way to make "bacon" is with our Imitation Bacon Seasoning which allows you to make bacon out of any type of meat. You can use Beef, Wild Game, Poultry, or even just leaner cuts of pork. Today we are going to be showing you how to make three different types out of Turkey, Leaner Pork and Beef. Rather than a whole muscle product, our imitation bacon will be a ground and formed product.

Our process is going to be very similar for all of these other than the amount of fat that we are going to be adding, or not adding. If you are making this out of the whole muscle you need to grind your lean product twice through a 1/8" plate and your fat once through a 3/16" plate. We have some 80/20 ground beef here and some fatty ground pork as well so we are starting out with an already ground product on these. For the Turkey, we just stopped by the store and picked up some 85/15 lean to fat ratio pre-ground turkey to make turkey bacon. We've said it before but it's worth repeating, whether you are making Bratwursts or Snack Sticks or whatever, there is nothing wrong with picking up a previously ground product at the store and starting from there if you don't have a grinder. You won't have as much control over the entire process but you can still get a great tasty product by doing this.

If you want to get real fancy with your imitation bacon, and start with whole muscle meat and grind it yourself, you can keep the lean meat separated from the fat to layer the lean and fat meat and truly create a more bacon-looking product. We will be simply combining it all together, so we won't get that separate and visible distinction between the lean and fat particles, so it won't look as close to normal bacon.

So we have our meat, we are trying to get somewhere in the 80/20 to 60/40 range with the beef and pork but for the Turkey we are going to add some carrot fiber and extra water, a nice thing about the Imitation Bacon Seasoning is that it already has phosphate in it for water retention so while that bacon will be a little different than the others we should still get a nice juicy product out of it.

We have measured all of this out for 2 lb batches, so we have .075 lb or 1.2 oz of the seasoning (which already includes our cure), 4.8 oz of water and .16 oz of smoked meat stabilizer. We are adding smoked meat stabilizer because we don't want to wait overnight for the cure to work in the meat, basically we are hungry and we want to cook it immediately!

So we are going to mix all of this until we have protein extraction and the meat is nice and sticky. With a mixer, this would take about 5 minutes, but since we are doing such small batches we need to do this by hand, so it will just take as long as it takes. I've brought a coin so we can flip and see who has to mix these.

Now we are going to use a 2 lb foil pan to form a loaf for cooking and then slicing. If you don't have a pan you can just use a cookie sheet and form a slab-like form for cooking. Another nice thing about this process is that the seasoning already has a smoke flavoring mixed in, if you want to increase that you could either add some hickory smoke powder or cook it in your smoker. We are just going to do this one in the oven as that’s how most of you at home will be doing it.

To cook this we are going to start at 120 degrees for one hour then 145 degrees for an hour and then finally at 175 degrees until we hit an internal meat temperature is 160 degrees. If your oven or smoker cannot get down to 120 degrees, just start as low as you can.

Once it is done cooking you can either cut it with a knife and eat right away or you can allow it to cool down and then use a slicer to get a more traditional bacon look. Either way is fine, we've just been cooking this all day and don't want to wait any longer. For the best results, slice the imitation bacon, and pan-fry just like normal bacon. It will crisp up great and have a taste very similar to traditional bacon!

[sandybonesteel]

I had never thought about making my own immitation bacon. Such a great idea.

[karenjaras]

I love turkey bacon on the grill but it can be very expensive and you never know what is in it. I will have to try this. It looks great!

[SillyTubereal]

I made it but my slices are not flexible like yours, they're breaking! What did I do wrong? I didn't add any meat binder, is that what keeps it together?

Edit: Never mind! I just sliced it while it was still hot. When I sliced it after cooling it in refrigerator for like 3 hours, it didn't break!

[charlesport]

This is a great Idea and will try it soon with Ground Venison with added pork fat

[michaelchevillot]

Thanks, I learned a lot. Merry Christmas!!!!

[fasttalker]

Cool idea! I like seeing all of these experiments

[TheKlink]

love putting bacon under the grill. i honestly find it quicker and easier than using the oven a lot of the time. i think you lot over there dont really have the grills we have above our ovens. so under the broiler? directly under a very high heat source.

Had some mutton bacon last year and it was amazing.

[dennismcginnis]

I made this and it turned out pretty good. I did a mix of beef and pork. Consistency was just right as far as I know. The loaf was firm but easy to slice. Cooked up nice too and tasty. I smoked mine instead of using the oven. I have one issue though which is that it was a little saltier than I like. Is there a less salty version?

[vgcrepairs]

Why aren’t the water and carrot fiber amounts mentioned as in how much to use

[rollbot]

i am not reading from a script to this camera. it wont looks like it, but, i promise this is the best imitation presentation ever you will ever tasty to a lean of bacon from an imitation look

[domnicsickles]

Friend of mine and I want to try this out. Not sure which meat we want to use first though. They all sound good.

[vanolson]

If I'd known it was that easy and it looks pretty good too!

[sammosam]

Your video was really interesting! Very cool seeing how you can do this in an oven - I'm going to try this soon.

[jimknox]

Oh, heck yeah! I have to try that. Imitation bacon that easy. Let's do this.

[lauriearnheim]

This actually looks/sounds really good to me!

[BowhuntingandFitnessTV]

Can you take that oven cooked bacon and throw it in a dehydrator for jerky?

[TrendingWithMatt]

Have you guys ever tried making restructured jerky by using this idea of a meat loaf that you freeze and slice on a meat slicer?

[clamroll]

So, bake like a meatloaf, refrigerate, then slice then crisp by whaever means...?

[tzymrgst]

forget about baking bacon, it has to be thrown on a griddle and fried up crisp.

[poochyface]

The only thing I was missing is the bacon spices. Thanks for sharing