Is it safe to eat smoked bacon without grilling?

Question

The reason I ask this is due to the fact nothing on the bacon packaging indicates it can or cannot be eaten 'raw' and in general eating raw meat is a bad idea.

Answer

In such a case, for any food item, ask yourself a question: In a 19th century household, would it have been kept in the cellar, or eaten immediately?

For bacon, it is common knowledge (or at least I think everybody knows it) that it was kept in a cellar for long time. So this is definitely not a food which perishes too quickly. You can eat it raw. (In fact, I often do when I need a quick sandwich). It can be a bit tough to tear apart with your teeth, so pre-cut it.

The reason for this is that bacon is cured meat. There are two reasons not to eat raw meat: taste and food safety. Taste is individual, some people are OK with the taste and eat raw meat as long as they can find a source of meat fresh enough (think sashimi, carpaccio, steak tartare). Food safety is not a problem with bacon. The process of turning pork to bacon includes salt and smoke. Both of these kill bacteria, create an environment which is not hospitable to new colonization (dry, salty), and give the meat a new flavor which is better than the raw meat.

If you are now asking yourself why we are bothering with the fridge for bacon and other ex-"cellar foods" at all, there is still a reason. First, most of us don't have a convenient cellar at 12° - 15°C, and not only is the bacon's life shortened if kept at usual kitchen temperatures, it also doesn't taste too good. It is just greasy. Second, you seldom get dry bacon at the supermarket; even if the curing process doesn't include brining, bacon is often aged much less than in old times, and then packed in vacuum, so it doesn't get really dry on the outside. So bacteria could very well start growing on it outside of the freezer. Inside the freezer, it keeps much longer than raw meat, and is certainly OK for consumption without frying. I guess that the popularity of fried bacon is mainly due to taste reasons.

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