I heard about Perth Pork Products (www.perthporkproducts.com) 'Specializing in Rare & Heritage Breed Pigs' when reading www.blogto.com about a new establishment called Rasher's in Toronto. They are apparently 'North America's only shop dedicated to quality bacon sandwiches' so I found out they use Perth's bacon and tracked down where I could buy that bacon and bought some at Oliffe (www.olliffe.ca/ - south of the Summerhill LCBO on Yonge). The price per pound was an eye-popping $16. They had pre-packaged pre-sliced smoked and double-smoked bacon in the cooler but also smoked Berkshire by the slab which they will slice to your desired thickness, so I bought the latter (the cooler bacon was not Berkshire and I was dying to try this breed). I also went to Cumbrae's and bought some of their non-Berkshire pre-sliced bacon at $10/lb (although they also have Berkshire which they custom slice, just not any right now). I made sure both were the same thickness, btw, as I was going to do a taste comparison.
Both use real smoke from wood chips, but Cumbrae's only uses only sodium nitrite whereas Perth uses the nitrite and also Sodium phosphate (to hold moisture) and Sodium erythorbate.(to hold/enhance the colour). Also Perth doesn't use sugar in their brine whereas Cumbrae's does. I also found out that Perth does make nitrite-free bacon once in a while but it has to be ordered directly and kept frozen (as the nitrite is a preservative that prevents all kinds of nasty bacteria from forming). The only reason to order that bacon seems to be if you don't want that chemical in your bacon, rather than any major taste difference.
The Berkshire had noticeably more meat in it than fat and more meat than the Cumbrae's bacon but this was because of the breed not where I bought it from. The meat in both had exactly the same colour and looked as moist as eachother so I am not sure how the sodium phosphate and erythorbate make a difference, but I suspect they only do as time goes on since bacon treated with also the latter two chemicals seems to have a best before date of about 5 weeks but Cumbrae's tells me theirs is best in about 4-5 days, yet both are made with sodium nitrite.
I cooked both exactly the same and found the Berkshire had a bit more of a 'meaty' flavour and was ever so slightly gamey-er tasting, where with the other the taste of the fat came through a bit more. Both were wonderful in their own way, but I am not sure the Berkshire was worth paying 60% more but I would not hesitate to buy it if it was, say, just a dollar or two more per pound. I'll have to see what Cumbrae's charges for their Berkshire once it's available (they told me all the ham demand right now is why they don't have the Berkshire bacon).
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