Natural New Age Mum

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Dorsogna 100% Natural Bacon Review

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Dorsogna 100% Natural Bacon Review

Dorsogna 100% Natural Bacon Review

This bacon product is fairly new to the market and caused a bit of interest on my social media amongst you all! I promised I would do you a review and tell you my thoughts and here it is.

First up, this review is not sponsored or endorsed by Dorsogna in any way. I actually emailed them to ask questions about the product months ago and I haven’t heard back!

Why is natural bacon of interest??

Well, it’s a long and complicated story! There still exists some debate about bacon and nitrates/nitrites but I found this article at Weston A Price to be quite good at explaining it all.

Personally, I try to eat full fat food with minimal processing and avoid synthetic additives.

 

The Product

This bacon is readily available in most of the big supermarkets with the 400g pack retailing for around $10.

Dorsogna make a number of claims on their bacon including:

100% natural ingredients

No artificial preservatives

No added nitrites

No artificial flavours

No artificial colours

Gluten free

No synthetic ingredients

97% fat free

Minimally processed

Of course, we all know that to truly assess a product, we should always read the ingredient list rather than relying on marketing claims, right!?

Dorsogna 100% natural bacon review2

So, the ingredient list:
Pork (90%), water, salt, potato starch, cane sugar, vegetable extract, vegetable fibre, fruit extract, natural flavourings, naturally wood smoked.

I really wanted to know what exactly the vegetable and fruit extract and the natural flavourings are but as I didn’t get a reply from the company, it’s anyone’s guess!

So, the ingredient list doesn’t sound too bad, right? It’s definitely an improvement on some bacon you can buy from the supermarket. If you are specifically avoiding synthetic nitrates/nitrites you might be happy to buy it and not investigate further.

 

The Pork

So, my other questions to Dorsogna were, where is the meat sourced from? is the meat free range? what do the pigs eat? how is it processed? what chemicals are used in the processing? are there chemicals used in the packaging?

The package states that the meat is ‘made in Australia from local and imported ingredients.’

Having a friend that is a pig farmer has really opened my eyes to all of these concerns! I want to eat pork that is treated humanely, allowed to roam on pasture, reared and processed in Australia, that has eaten a nutritious, natural diet and is processed and packaged without added chemicals.

I will make an assumption here that the pork is not free range or exclusively from Australia. My conclusion is based on the fact that these claims are not on the packaging. As these are desirable attributes to a consumer, you would have to conclude that if it was free range, Aussie meat, they would be shouting it from the rooftops.

Dorsogna 100% natural bacon review3

The Taste

Okay, so now we get to another important aspect – the taste!!!

Our family loves bacon….. like really loves it. But not this bacon. Everyone in the family hated it!

It’s really salty and tastes to me like Spam. The kids have no idea what Spam tastes like but they also said it was too salty and had a fake taste.

The texture is really mushy and has a strange, soft mouthfeel (again rather Spam like).

When cooking the bacon, I could not get it to crisp up at all, it just seems to stay the same colour  and stick to the pan. You can see in the photo how it broke down into pieces after cooking. That happened every single time I cooked it.

So, when I compare this to the natural bacon I usually buy, it’s really, really different, both in taste and texture.

 

Final Verdict

I like the fact that the bacon is gluten-free and appears to have no added synthetic additives. It’s also easy to source and not too expensive.

Would I buy it again? Nope.

Aside from the fact that we didn’t like the taste and texture, I really don’t like supporting an industry where animals are treated inhumanely. Free range, high welfare meat is really important to our family.

I don’t mind paying extra for better quality.

 

Other Options

If you would prefer to eat natural, Aussie bacon with minimal processing the best advice I can give you is to see what you can source locally. Check out your farmers’ markets or your organic butcher and ask questions.

There are some amazing farmers out there producing beautiful pork products. Once you taste this type of bacon, trust me, you will love bacon even more.

 

I would love to know what you think! Have you tried it? 

 

 

Changing Habits

3 Easy Ways to Jazz up Chicken

· 25 Comments

chicken

We eat a lot of chicken.

It’s one of the cheaper meats to buy organically and it’s a kid pleaser.

We are lucky enough to have a local farmer who has beautiful organic, free range, pasture-fed chicken at a great price. If you are not so lucky, Woolworths and Coles usually have organic chicken. Please, at least try to get free range. It’s just nicer for the chookies.

These are our three favourite go-to recipes to jazz up our chicken pieces.

Okay, so this is what you do:

I like to make up the mix and marinate in the morning or the night before for better flavour, but you don’t have to. Use any chicken pieces you like.  If you have drumsticks, I put two slashes in the meaty part. It makes the chicken cook quicker and it helps get the flavour into the meat. I like to massage the marinade into the meat with my hands to really get it well coated (and maybe it feels a bit therapeutic as well!). These marinades are good for about 500g – 700g of meat. Any more than that, double the recipe.

At dinner time,  just whack your chicken in the oven and while they are cooking, steam some fresh veges or knock together a salad. I use either a pyrex lasagne dish or a rack on a biscuit tray, both uncovered.

How long it will take to cook depends on the cut of chicken you use. I find chicken breast or thigh fillets take about 10-15 minutes and chicken on the bone, about 25-30 minutes. I usually cook it on 200º celsius, as this gives a nice brown, caramelization on the chicken. Baste a few times with the marinade if you like.

I always make extra for lunches the next day. The chicken is really beautiful sliced cold on top of a salad or in a sandwich or wrap. You could also use the extra to put on top of pizzas for the next night’s dinner. Get creative and save yourself time in the kitchen!

Healthy, wholesome  food, dead easy!

 

Sticky Pomegranate Chicken

This one (pictured) is simply 1/2 cup of tomato relish or chutney and 2 tablespoons of pomegranate molasses. When I am organized, I make my own tomato relish with rapadura sugar in the thermomix. When I am not, I just use the Macro organic one from Woolworths. Just check the one you use has no numbers! If you can’t get pomegranate molasses, balsamic glaze is also really nice in this recipe. Yes, there is a bit of sugar in these products, but you are only using a little bit and it makes it nice and sticky and appealing to kids. The excess marinade left in the pan also makes a nice little bit of sauce to go over the chicken.

 

Spicy Yoghurt Chicken

Mix together really well, 1/2 cup of natural, organic greek yoghurt with 1 tablespoon of organic spice blend or 1-2 tablespoons of curry paste. I really like the Five AM brand of yoghurt – there are no fillers or anything artificial added. For spice mix, we like Your Inspiration at Home blends.  You could also try the mild curry rub from Artisse Organics or the blends from Gourmet Organic Herbs. If you are clever, make your own blends! I just find that using a blend is easy and it gets used up quickly, rather than having heaps of spices in the pantry.

Use more or less spice, depending on how much your kids like. Or you can make up a very mild batch for them and make an extra-spicy adult batch. I like to cook this one on a rack so the chicken doesn’t go too wet and gloopy, but goes nice and dry and crispy.

 

Maple Mustard Chicken

This is a beautiful combination – sticky and flavoursome. Just mix 1/2 cup of dijon mustard with 1/4 cup of maple syrup. You can now get organic mustard from the Woolworths Macro range. Always buy real maple syrup, not imitation maple flavoured syrup – it’s loaded with artificial stuff! This recipe is also really tasty if you wrap the chicken pieces in some good quality organic bacon first. Mmmmm yummy. I like to cook this one one a rack too, but you don’t need to!

Okay, so they are just some of the ways we like to jazz up our chicken. I have a few more ideas up my sleeve I will share with you in the coming weeks.

How do you jazz up your chicken? Leave me a comment or a link!

 

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