How Exactly Is Turkey Bacon Made?

Turkey bacon has been around since the 1980s, but it rose to popularity in the 1990s, when it was promoted as a healthier option than traditional bacon, with less fat and fewer calories. Part of turkey bacon's enduring popularity though, is that it's suitable for people who don't eat pork, whether for religious or health reasons.

Which invites the question of how turkey bacon is made. Traditional bacon is sliced meat from any fatty part of the pig, but mainly the belly (American bacon), the back (Canadian bacon), or less often the shoulder. A quick look at a turkey, no matter how large the size, will show you there's no body part that can be sliced up in the same way, and the birds also lack the fat layer present on pigs.

And so turkey bacon isn't formed from a single cut of meat, but a composite of ground meat pressed into slabs, which is cured and smoked as you would regular bacon. These final steps are what help give the turkey its bacon-like taste, and when sliced into strips it's a convincing substitution for use on BLTs or as crispy slices on your breakfast plate.

The journey to turkey bacon starts with the selection of the meat. This will vary between turkey bacon brands, but both dark and white meat can be used, and often a mixture of both. Breast meat is lower in fat, but dark meat will help provide that meaty chew, so by adjusting the ratio, you can control both the texture and the fat content of the final product.

The meat is finely chopped or minced, at which point salt, seasonings, and sometimes preservatives are added. For turkey bacon which has an apparent fat layer that gives it the look of regular bacon, it's actually just the juxtaposition of white and dark meat, which are processed separately to give this look, with the white meat given a finer grind. The two mixes are then combined to give it that marbled effect.

Just as with regular bacon, you'll find cured and uncured meat. It's important to realize that all bacon needs to be cured for preservation, the difference being that bacon sold as uncured uses only natural nitrites found in vegetables. After curing, the meat is pressed into slabs and smoked to give it that true bacon flavor. Large scale manufacturers might simply cook the bacon rather than smoking it, and instead add smoke flavoring. You can find all kinds of turkey bacon available online like these standard Oscar Meyer strips, or this Applegate hickory smoked uncured variety.