NYT Wirecutter tested 22 bacons and named six. North Country Smokehouse Organic Applewood was the one they filed under “chef-quality.
The test deserves a paragraph. They researched more than 30 brands before narrowing the field to 22 — supermarket staples, grocery house brands, and specialty producers — then cooked all of them the same way, on foil-lined sheet pans at 425°F, over two days with the labels concealed. Every brand was photographed raw and cooked to show how it shrank and how the fat rendered. Scoring covered appearance, texture, and flavor. The panel was led by a James Beard Award–winning writer and staffed by kitchen journalists trained in sensory evaluation at Rutgers. No brand knew it was happening.
They noticed our edges first. Those dark, toasted margins show on the raw slices and go darker in the pan, and they’re the signature of a real smokehouse — meat hung over embers of local hardwood, not sprayed with liquid smoke and sent on its way. The panel described the result as rich and charry, savory and unctuous. Composed, as if a team of chefs had fussed over it.
They also clocked the sodium: 200 mg per two slices, the lowest in the test, and still bright and properly salted on the tongue.
“One bite legitimizes it: Rich and charry, savory and unctuous, this bacon carries an artisanal elegance that’s sophisticated and familiar at the same time.”
Lean bellies from our own vertically integrated family-farm network. Hand-trimmed by butchers. Smoked low and slow in small batches over local hardwood. It takes longer and costs more, and it holds up under a concealed label next to 21 other brands.
Their full review is worth your time — including a genuinely useful glossary on what uncured actually means (among other in-depth bacon knowledge). [Read it at Wirecutter.]
USDA Certified Organic. Certified Humane. Non-GMO. No antibiotics, no added growth hormones, no cages or crates. One of the last family-owned smokehouses in America, still doing it the slow way. [Find it near you.]
