Review: Corn King Hardwood Smoked Bacon

A couple weeks ago, I was at the store and we decided to pick up some things for breakfast. This included a couple packs of bacon. My wife and I bought a package of turkey bacon and decided to try that first but, in addition to that, we purchased a package of Hardwood Smoked Bacon from the brand Corn King.

I have seen this brand several times but have never had the opportunity to try it. In fact, the only reason I ended up purchasing it this time around was it was considerably cheaper than the other brands I had to choose from. So, this morning, when I decided to make my wife breakfast in bed (yes, I do nice things like that for her still), I figured it was an opportunity to give this a try.

I have to say I was not impressed with this bacon.

The second I opened the package and got a good look at the Corn King bacon, I immediately knew this was of a lesser quality than many other brands I've purchased before. The bacon looked like it was almost all fat. There was hardly any meat on it at all.

I held out hope that I was just overreacting and ended up making this bacon anyway in the hopes that, once it was cooked, it would be as good as other brands. But, all that did was support my initial impression. There was tons of grease (even more than I usually see with bacon) and, even after cooking down, it still looked like more fat than meat.

When it came to taste, I will admit, the bacon wasn't terrible. It did have a nice hardwood flavor to it like the package promised and, unlike some other cheaper brands of bacon I've purchased in the past, it wasn't overly salty. But, I wasn't able to enjoy this all that much because the bacon was just too chewy. I like bacon that is somewhat crisp (without being over cooked) and I could not get this bacon crisp at all. As a result, when eating it, there were times when I felt like I was chewing bacon-flavored gum. I even had to spit out a piece because I couldn't get it chewed up enough for me to swallow it.

Unfortunately, even though this was a brand that was more affordable than most others, I just don't see myself buying it again. It's cheaper. But it also lacks quality.