‘Crisps up perfectly’: the best (and worst) supermarket bacon, tasted and rated

Which rasher is heavenly thick and smoky, and which is hellishly thin and salty?

• The best frying pans for every kind of cook, tested

Crisp, mahogany-red rashers of smoked streaky bacon are the food of the gods. Naturally rich in glutamates – umami compounds that make food deeply savoury – it’s no wonder that the smell of sizzling bacon has such legendary allure.

As the name suggests, layers of fat are marbled through a rasher of streaky bacon, which comes from the lower belly of the pig. Fat holds flavour and distributes it through the meat, resulting in a full, long-lasting taste experience.