Bacon storage

A high proportion of pork is pickled in brine and smoked, to make ham or bacon. The original process was to immerse the meat in a tank of cold brine for a period. A quicker method is to inject the cold pickle with hypodermic needles into the cuts. Smoking is carried out at around 52°C, so the cured bacon must be cooled again for slicing, packing and storage. 

Price, K.R., Bacon, J.R., and Rhodes, M.J.C., Effect of storage and domestic processing on the content and composition of flavonol glucosides in onion Allium cepd), J. Agric. Food Chem., 45, 938, 1997. 

Bacon BR, Britton RS Hemochromatosis and other iron storage disorders, in Schiff ER, Sorrell MF, MaddreyWC,et al. (eds) Schiff s Diseases of the Liver. Philadelphia, Lippincott Williams and Wilkins, 2003, pp. 1187-1205. 

Fats are the main constituents of the storage fat cells in animals and plants, and are one of the important food reserves of the organism. We can extract these animal and vegetable fats—liquid fats are often referred to as oils—and obtain such substances as corn oil, coconut oil, cottonseed oil, palm oil, tallow, bacon grease, and butter. 

Shrewsbury et al. (1942) found in studies on the stability of hog fat that the soft fat (peanut-fed, iodine munber 73-80) was consistently less stable than the hard (corn-fed, iodine number 58-60) both fresh and after frozen storage. However, there was more variation in the keeping time of hard fats from different lots of pork than in the keeping time of hard versus soft in any one lot. Peroxide values for fats extracted from the meats after freezer storage for 12 to 16 months were low and showed no significant differences between hard and soft fats. Brady et al. (1946) and Palmer et al. (1953) showed positive correlation between the softness of the fat and the susceptibility to rancidity of bacon and frozen ground pork, respectively. 

Fig. 6. Effect of salt on oxidation of bacon fat (Gaddis, 1952). Peroxide formation in outside 4 mm. and inside fat from bacon containing different amounts of salt during 3 weeks of curing at 38 F. (3.3° C.) and subsequent freezer storage at 0° P. (-17.8° C.).

Gaddis, A. M. 1952. Effect of pure salt on the oxidation of bacon in freezer storage. Food Teehnol. 6, 294. 

White, W. H. 1941b. Rancidity in pork fat after frozen storage and conversion to bacon. Can. J. Research 19D, 96. 

White, W H. 1944. Smoked meats. II. Development of rancidity in smoked and unsmoked Wiltshire bacon during storage. Can. J. Research 22F, 97. 

Buckley, J. and Connolly, J.F. (1980) Influence of alpha-tocopherol (vitamin E) on storage stability of raw pork and bacon. J. Food Protect. 43, 265-267. 

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