Canadian Fakin’: Peameal’s the Real Deal

Canadian Bacon Is A Lie

If you are in America, you’ve probably seen it. The little round pieces of wet-cured smoke-flavored pork loin we call Canadian Bacon in the United States. If you are not bound by religious or ethical requirements not to eat pork, it’s likely you’ve tasted it. Whether in an Egg McMuffin, a Hawaiian pizza, Eggs Benedict, or simply on a plate with cheese and crackers. It’s a familiar and comforting symbol of “America’s Hat,” our friendly neighbors to the north, and about as Canadian as a bald eagle wearing a sombrero.

That’s not entirely true. Cured, smoked “back” bacon cut from the loin is common in Canada, though perhaps less watery, less perfectly-round and English Muffin-sized than what is called Canadian Bacon here. Those parts of Canada that do not now speak French were largely settled by the British–Canada is still considered part of the “Commonwealth of Nations,” though it is a sovereign nation with its own constitution–and Canadian bacon, like British or Irish rashers, is cut from the loin. It is recognizably bacon to a Brit, though quite lean by comparison to the standard rasher.

The true taste of the Great White North though, at least of that portion of it centered around Toronto, is called peameal bacon. Peameal bacon is made from the same cut (loin) as smoked back bacon, and wet-cured the same way, often with some sweetness from maple syrup in the brine. Instead of being smoked, though, when peameal bacon is fully cured it is rolled in meal–originally peameal (hence the name) but in the modern era cornmeal is universally used–drying the surface of the meat to discourage spoilage bacteria and adhering a layer of cornmeal to the surface of the loin. Unlike most smoked back bacons, peameal bacon is not a cooked product, and though a peameal bacon loin is sometimes roasted whole, it is more commonly sliced thin, fried on a griddle, and served in a sandwich with mustard.

St. Lawrence Market

The peameal bacon sandwich is the official dish of Toronto, capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. Before Chicago was called the Hog Butcher for the World, Toronto earned the nickname Hogtown, whether for the size of their stockyards or for the purported avarice of the populace.

In the mid-19th Century, William Davies emigrated from England to Toronto, bringing with him the English practice of curing pork loins and hams in a salt and brown sugar brine. There he opened a stall in the St. Lawrence Market, a public market founded in 1803, where he sold these cured meats. Eventually this business grew into the William Davies Company, one of the largest pork processors in North America. More to the point, it was that stall in the market where peameal bacon was invented.

Why peameal? The crust of dried ground legumes may have been a cheaper, quicker way to preserve the cured meat than smoking. Whether roasted or sliced thin and pan-fried, the crust also provides a crisp-edged texture to the meat, enhancing the experience of eating it. In any case, it caught on, and became part of the culinary landscape in and around Toronto. Did William Davies also introduce the particularly Canadian practice of using maple syrup in the brine? These details appear lost to time.

But 100 years later, it was another stand in the market that introduced the next great innovation in peameal bacon: the peameal bacon sandwich. By this time, cornmeal had replaced yellow peameal as the coating of choice for peameal bacon, and the William Davies company had grown beyond its humble market-based roots. Local Toronto lore states that a meat seller in the market partnered with a bakery to use the wasted ends of loins from which customers chose only to buy the prized center portion. Wikipedia says the butcher stand was called Joe Homer’s but in this article the Biancolin family who now own Carousel Bakery claim they were curing their own peameal bacon at the time. Our Torontonian friend Arlo has already told us about his experiences at the St. Lawrence Market, and the Carousel Bakery sandwich he tried, simpler and less photogenic than the other but superior–is in the direct lineage of that primal sandwich ancestor.

The sole condiment normally used to enhance the peameal bacon sandwich is mustard. Mustard shows up in various forms in cuisines all over the world–mustard seed is used extensively in South Asian cuisines, mustard greens are common in the cuisines of East Asia, Africa, and the American South, and the eponymous sauce made from mustard seeds is a must wherever sausages are made. Mustard is unusual for a spice crop though in that it is one of the few spices that grows better in a cooler climate. Canada has traditionally been the world leader in mustard production along with other cooler-climated countries like Russia and Nepal, and there are many boutique mustards being produced all over Canada.

The St. Lawrence Market’s boutique mustard is called Kozlik’s. I have three varieties–I often feel bad for acquiring too many condiments but these are spectacular and I feel they will not go to waste.

A Canadian Bacon in King Arthur’s Bread

That is, burger buns made from the King Arthur Flour recipe at least.

Wikipedia claims that the peameal bacon sandwich is served on Kaiser rolls, and maybe it is in many places, or something much like Kaiser. However, Google Image searches as well as this writeup from our friends at Canadian food blog Eat This Town show something much more like a large, somewhat flat hamburger bun. Click through to either link and you’ll see a round bun with a soft crumb and a crust that yields to the fingers wrapped around it. These buns fit that bill nicely.

Let’s back up though. Where would I get peameal bacon? I made it, of course, taking elements I liked from several different recipes and coming up with this

And so: we have peameal bacon; we have buns for making sandwiches; and we have Canadian mustards of the sort typically used in peameal bacon sandwiches. That’s all we really need to get started.

I greased up my stainless grill-top griddle with a little lard I’d rendered making chicharrones last month–pork loin is a lean meat and might not render enough fat on its own to keep from sticking–and cooked up some bacon. The cornmeal doesn’t adhere to the edges of the meat very permanently; it gets everywhere, but every little piece that comes into contact with the griddle adds a little bit of flavor and crunch to the bacon. Back bacon does not crisp up the way belly bacon does, so this additional texture helps.

The buns were just as I’d hoped, a malleable crumb with a firm crust that is softened by the application of melted butter at the end of baking.

My first sandwich was made with the “Classic” Dijon mustard, a coarser affair than the Grey Poupons of the world, quite tart, a little hot and a touch garlicky. It’s a natural partner for cured pork, as are most mustards, and worked particularly well with this peameal bacon. The bacon itself has a mild sweetness from the brown sugar and maple syrup in the brine and is delicate in flavor, less salty than one might imagine. The lean meat of the pork loin can dry out quickly if cooked incorrectly but quickly cooked through at high temperature it retains enough moisture that little else is needed beyond bun, bacon, and mustard.

The “Amazing Maple” mustard is as amazing as the title would have you believe. Brown, viscous, and smooth, it tastes at once both like a Dijon mustard and a Canadian maple syrup. Would I pour it on pancakes? I MIGHT. In the context of this sandwich though I feel that the sweetness of the mustard overwhelms the subtle sweetness of the peameal bacon and so I didn’t like this combination quite as well as the previous.

My friend Arlo, a Torontonian who also posted on this site about his experience with the peameal bacon sandwich this month, recommended Kozlik’s “Dijon by Anton” to me, and I saved the best for last. Smoother than the classic Dijon, browner, it is less tart but substantially hotter, hot with that pungent burn that rises immediately into your sinuses. Even with this more aggressive flavor, this mustard did the best job out of the 3 in bringing out the sweetness of the peameal bacon, I thought. A buttery griddled bun; crisp-edged slices of pork, mild and sweet; and a mustard that violently clears the way for the bacon’s aromatic qualities to present themselves. It’s a simple sandwich, a combination of 2 good quality complimentary ingredients enveloped in a bread that intrudes neither with showy quality nor with an obnoxious lack of it.

I don’t want to be too cliched, but this sandwich inspired me to make another Canadian classic: Poutine. Poutine is Quebecois rather than Ontarian to be sure, and entirely without bacon of any kind, but is a tasty and calorie-laden accompaniment to the peameal bacon sandwich. Homemade pork gravy flavored with ketchup and Worcestershire sauce complements any kind of fried potato perfectly–I’m sure it’s the ketchup, even though I don’t care for it much on its own. When poutine is assembled quickly–that is, when one doesn’t stop to take photos at every step along the way–using room-temperature cheese curds, the heat of the fries and the gravy partially melts each curd, leaving appealing gradients between the central nuggets of solid cheese and the peripheral goo adhering to each fry, blending to some degree with the gravy. Every bite is just a little bit different; poutine is like a choose-your-own-adventure book, but tastier.

Back to the peameal bacon–according to some Torontonians I consulted, a fried egg is a classic addition to a peameal bacon sandwich. I was advised not to use hot sauce though, as that might overwhelm the delicate flavor of the bacon.

A bacon sandwich with egg–even an egg whose yolk I accidentally broke–is of course, a natural for breakfast, and this sandwich served nicely. Hot sauce may indeed have overwhelmed the delicate flavor of the peameal bacon, but it could have used something–some HP sauce, maybe. Better yet, how about a melty slice of good old American cheese?

More Fun With Back Bacon

The keen-eyed observer may have noted in the peameal bacon recipe above that some of the photos pictured two pork loins

This is because alongside the peameal bacon, I made another version of Canadian bacon. Many Americans compare Canadian bacon to ham, an erroneous but understandable confusion. Ham refers to a specific part of the pig’s leg, while bacon can refer to meat taken from the belly, sides, or back of the pig. Pork loin is a lean muscle located along the pig’s spine, and salted or cured loin is often referred to as “back bacon.”

The “Canadian bacon” we see in stores is a small, round section of loin, injection-brined with smoke flavor added, highly processed and pre-sliced. Much of the ham we see in stores is treated the same way, but comes from the leg rather than the loin. The end result is much the same, though–vaguely pinkish meat configured in a precise geometric shape not often seen in nature. So no, Canadian bacon is not ham, friends, but I don’t blame you for the confusion.

The Canadian bacon that I made was a 4 pound section of pork loin, cured in the same brine as above, then smoked to 140° over applewood. The apple smoke nicely enhances the sweet-cured flavor of the pork loin, and the meat, fully cooked, needs only be heated through before using in a breakfast sandwich like this knockoff of the venerable Egg McMuffin, celebrating its 50th anniversary this month by some accounts–Bay’s Brioche English muffin (a little too buttery and pastry-like for my tastes but still good), sharp cheddar, an over-medium egg, and a slice of my homemade Canadian bacon.

It also works out nicely in a Hawaiian pizza, another Ontarian invention. Here I tried making it both with and without giardiniera, after seeing a tweet by local pizza phenom John Carruthers extolling the greatness of combining pineapple with giardiniera on pizza.

One of my favorite uses for Canadian bacon is Eggs Benedict. This open-face sandwich (apparently invented some time in the mid-19th Century in New York City) features Canadian bacon on an English muffin, topped by a good old American egg poached in the French style, covered by Dutch sauce. (Yes, it’s a French sauce, but Hollandaise literally means Dutch). A truly All-American experience.

The smoked Canadian bacon is far different in both flavor and texture from the peameal version. The slow smoking of the meat results in an overall even rendering of the small amount of fat in the loin, tightening the meat’s grain and intensifying the salty and sweet flavors of the cure. The smoke flavor overwhelms the aromatic elements of the cure, but is a pleasant enough element on its own. Still, this more American-styled Canadian bacon does recall ham–at least, the city-style wet-cured ham that most Americans are accustomed to–more than bacon, while the peameal bacon, while lacking the streaks of fat or the smoky flavor that define American bacon, still does seem more like bacon than this, at least to someone familiar with British or Irish rashers.

I like them both, and I’m glad to have them. Which is great, since when you make 8 pounds of bacon, that’s what you’ll be eating for a while. I’m glad there are so many different ways to use it, but my favorite so far has been simple griddled slices of peameal bacon, dressed with Dijon mustard, served in a warm homemade bun. You can’t beat it. Thank you Canada for having such a tasty sandwich!