What is Slab Bacon?

Slab bacon is whole smoked pork belly before it's sliced into familiar bacon strips. In other words, this is bacon in its natural state. The benefit of slab bacon is that you can slice it how you like: thick, ultra-thin, or somewhere in between. Read on and learn how to use slab bacon in your kitchen, and discover a whole new world of bacon obsession.

How to Cook Slab Bacon

Because you can control the thickness, you can slice bacon to meet any requirement. Thicker bacon is useful in recipes where thin slices would cook too quickly or burn. Slab bacon can impart smoky, salty flavor to dishes, and offers satisfying texture: crispy on the outside, chewy and meaty on the inside.

Here are a few ways to use slab bacon...

Everything starts with lardons, which is a French word for bacon matchsticks, or cubes. The average size of lardons is about ¼ inch thick and an inch long. Cook them in a hot pan until crispy, and save the bacon fat that renders out. Lardons offer satisfying texture and richness on a salad, like frisée with a poached egg, on almost any soup, quiche, and more.

Pasta: Slab bacon is a natural fit with pasta. Carbonara is especially delicious with lardons tossed throughout. Or cook the lardons and then toss in cold pasta salads with vinaigrette dressing.

Soup: Slab bacon is perfect for soups of all kinds. In fact, you can begin soups and braises by rendering a thick slice of slab bacon (think coq au vin, beef bourguignon), which will impart smoky flavor and just enough bacon fat to get things going. Enliven creamy squash soups with a sprinkling of bacon lardons on top. Try tomato bacon bisque, or clam chowder with lardons.

Beans: Beans of all kinds, from lentils and split peas to Tarbais beans and baked beans, will benefit from the salty pleasure of bacon. Chunk the slab bacon as needed. Try our baked beans recipe with woven bacon on top - it uses both slab bacon in chunks and thinner slices of bacon.

Pizza: Make savory tarte flambée, basically Alsatian pizza, with lardons, onions and fromage blanc. But even American-style pizza, piled with toppings, will be even better with bacon.

Bacon Jam: You need to try bacon jam. Chop up some slab bacon and cook it down with onions until it all melds together in a sweet & salty spread that’s excellent on burgers. We also like it on toast, or served on a charcuterie board too.

Slab Bacon vs. Pork Belly

You can get raw pork belly at our website and make your own bacon, or slow roast it for quivering results. Pork belly becomes slab bacon after it is rubbed with salt and sugar and smoked over wood chips.

Our slab bacon comes from heritage-breed hogs that are raised on pasture. These old breeds offer certain advantages when it comes to making bacon: rich flavor and lots of marbling. We smoke the pork bellies over real applewood, and never use nitrates or nitrites.

Where to Buy Slab Bacon

Grocery stores may offer small pieces of slab bacon, but if you want the whole thing, you are in the right place. We offer two plates of slab bacon large enough to serve bacon at every meal for some time to come. The best part is that slab bacon freezes beautifully, so just portion it out in vacuum-sealed bags and keep your freezer stocked. You will never be caught without bacon again.