Bacon (oven baked): How to make it healthier
As a traditional foods based holistic nutritionist I get a lot of questions about whether or not it is healthy to eat bacon.
Concerns abound over pork. Some are realistic- like concerns over parasites, but others are nebulous -such as the widespread phobia of saturated fat.
Another partially revealing concern that my clients have is about how eating pork is shown to aggregate blood cells in live blood cell analysis.
Traditionally, pork was prepared by marinating it in an acidic medium (usually vinegar), to preserve it before the age of refrigeration.
But can we still benefit from the traditional preparation of pork today and is anyone still doing it?
According to Sally Fallon author of Nourishing Traditions and expert in food traditions from around the world “Pork is traditionally marinated in vinegar in the Philippines and in Argentina; in Europe it is fermented or cured; even America has her tradition of pickled pigs’ feet and vinegar-marinated barbecue.”
Lacto fermentation has incredible benefits in and of itself, but marinating our meat in an acidic medium has the added benefit of making it more digestible and thereby increasing nutrient assimilation.
So what if there was a way to make pork not only more digestible, but free of parasites while forgoing the platelet aggregation?
Lacto fermentation can help you do all that -and best of all it is easy!
The beauty of lactic acid fermentation is that it makes the environment inhospitable to parasites and pathogenic bacteria- reducing the chances that you could be infected with a parasite.
You can consider ‘cooking’ as your second line of defense, instead of your only defense against roundworm and tapeworm.
Better Oven Baked Bacon
What you will need:
glass baking tray
bacon
unpasteurized apple cider vinegar
How to do it:
Step 1: Put bacon in a glass oven safe large rectangular baking dish.
Step 2: Pour unpasteurized apple cider vinegar on top- just enough to cover.
Step 3: Let marinate overnight to make the bacon more digestible and to destroy any potential parasites (don’t pour off the vinegar in the am- it keeps the bacon from burning and sticking to the pan!).
Step 4: Turn your oven on to 400 degrees F and put the bacon in straight away (as in don’t preheat oven).
Step 5: Bake for approximately 20-34 min,depending on how thick your bacon is and how crisp you prefer it- I personally have a preference for VERY crisp bacon so I bake it 34 min.
Enjoy!