What's the difference between pancetta and bacon?

Charcuterie Questions that Vex the Internet: What’s the difference between pancetta and bacon?

I would not see the online populace irritated for want of an answer to a cured meat query. Not ever. So here’s the first in a series of quickish, complete-ish answers to the internet’s most urgent charcuterie questions.

Is there a difference between pancetta and bacon?

Yes and no, because pancetta is a type of bacon. Not all bacon is pancetta, but all pancetta is bacon. So, in the sense that pancetta is bacon, there’s no difference. But in the sense anyone asking would mean, yes there is, because pancetta is bacon prepared in a specific way.

What’s bacon, then?

Quite a broad church, actually. It’s whole muscle charcuterie (you make it from a whole joint), cured in salt, and sometimes other things, including sugar, curing salts, herbs, etc. Most commonly, it’s made from pork (everything you see in the supermarket and nearly everything in the butcher’s will be), and most often it’s made from pork loin (which we call ‘back bacon’), or pork belly (‘streaky bacon’). You can make bacon with other cuts, like collar, for example, but not so much from leg, which would normally be made into ham.

Bacon is cured, and you can have dry or wet cured. Wet cured bacon is brined, and is the stuff which leaks watery liquid when you fry it in the pan. Dry cured bacon is usually better quality, but more expensive, because it loses moisture (and therefore sellable weight) in the curing process, rather than gaining it during brining.

Bacon can be smoked or unsmoked. Unsmoked bacon is sometimes called green bacon. It is not, in fact, green. Bacon can also be dried for different amounts of time after curing, and so we come to the pancetta.

What’s different about pancetta?

Pancetta is generally bacon made from pork belly, and normally dry cured. It is sometimes smoked and sometimes not. It is always dried after curing to draw out moisture. While most of the bacon we’re used to in Britain will be dried for a few days to firm up and concentrate flavour, maybe a week or so, pancetta is dried for much longer, a month or two. As a result, the flavour is more complex and the texture is firmer and drier.

So how does pancetta differ from most other types of bacon?

That dryness, and the firmness of the texture. Also, it’s almost always pork belly bacon, i.e. streaky.

Can I use bacon instead of pancetta?

Of course you can, you’re the boss and nobody can stop you. Should you though? Absolutely. If a recipe wants pancetta, and there isn’t any around, the salty meatiness of another bacon is the next best thing. Dry cured bacon would be a closer match than regular supermarket bacon. Thicker cut rashers would be a better texture match than thinner slices, as the slice thickness will mimic the texture of pancetta a bit.

Is there anything else you can try?

Guanciale. Though to be honest, if you are somewhere without access to pancetta, the likelihood of stumbling across the even rarer guanciale is next to nil. Guanciale is bacon made from pork cheek. It’s generally even more savoury than pancetta. It’s the type of bacon traditional carbonara recipes call for, so if you want to be super authentic, use it in your next one of those. Usually, when trying to follow an authentic carbonara recipe, cooks start off looking for guanciale, then aiming to substitute that for pancetta, then giving up and using bacon. Entirely reasonable thing to do, if you didn’t know that we produce both guanciale and pancetta at Bray Cured, which you now do.