Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.
You guys remember a while back the Germans had the bizarrely awesome complete-cheeseburger-in-a-can? (Yes, we has can cheezeburger!) Well, apparently canned bacon is now available after a long hiatus from the market. Heres one website where they crack open a twenty year old can of preserved pig. Apparently, theres something of a demand for long-term bacon and thus a small run of the stuff can be had from these guys.
True, there is shelf stable bacon on the market these days but its expiration date on the box seems to indicate a fairly short shelf life…a few months at most. Its also usually pretty bloody expensive. If youre going to spend the money, you may as well get this heart-attack-in-a-can. You could, conceivably, make breakfast ten years from now…canned bacon, dehydrated eggs, dehydrated hash browns, some Tang and a cup of freeze dried coffee. Mmmmm…
I have no intention of giving up eating meat. If the the powers that be did not want me to eat animals, they wouldnt have made them out of meat now would they? So…I have freeze dried chicken and beef, but bacon…man, nothing adds a little decadence to a sandwich like a couple strips o’ pig.
For real fun you could peel the label, replace it with one from a can of hummus or something and send it to your favorite serviceman in Iraq. Make a friend for life, I tell ya.
In the army, I worked on using radiation to preserve food. We had a cobalt60 source (gamma rays) and a linear accelerator (which is what I worked on). We irradiated raw bacon (not cooked bacon as in your link) in cans experimentally with gamma rays. Irradiated bacon tasted fine, too. We ate it on camping trips.
I took a can home and had it for over 20 years. I managed to lose it, but when I finally found it, I decided to be safe and toss it. I’d been around the microbiology guys enough to get squiggly about long term raw meat storage, and their processes were still experimental.
We never did shelf life studies, so I’m not sure what shelf life might have been. If I remember correctly, the Danes sold irradiated bacon commercially, at least for awhile, but in the US, approval for raw bacon irradiation was withdrawn in 1968 because the fats became rancid and the oxidation problems caused heath issues in animals.
This publication was written the year I left. This publication is an irradiation update as of 2002. Note how many foods are already being irradiated.
I like the shelf-stable precooked bacon, and tried to keep a number of packages in the freezer. Unfortunately our grocery’s wholesaler stopped carrying it, so I’m going to have to start looking elsewhere.
Interesting. Im reminded of the scene in ’28 Days’ where the survivors hit a supermarket and all the veggies are dessicated putrid piles of crap but the irradiated ones are stil good.
One of the big problems with irradiation is that you sterilize the food, but because that doesn’t heat the food, you don’t stop enzyme action. To do that, you have to blanch the food first so the heat kills the enzymes. Without that step, you end up with well-preserved mush after a really long period of storage.
Freezing has the same problem. You can freeze whole raw tomatoes, for example, but they won’t keep as long as cooked and frozen tomato sauce. That’s one reason canning works so well – the process blanches and cooks, giving you maximum life.
That’s also why slow cooked meat works so well – the temperatures stay low enough that enzyme action keeps working longer to tenderize tough cuts. I think they’re killed at around 165F or something like that.
I learned a lot (and have forgotten a lot) from the food technologists at the lab.
bacon?
thin sliced spam fried works for me.any canned meat is far easier to obtain and use later, especially in an aftermath where 20,000 “instant hunters” are shooting each other while trying to bag a deer or squrriel.
on the matter of fresh meat purists, there is “long piq bacon” always available. bon’appitite, Wildflower 08