The difference between smoked and unsmoked bacon is one extra step, applied after the curing is already finished: smoked bacon spends time in cool smoke, unsmoked bacon does not. Both start life the same way, as pork cured with salt, and both are properly bacon. Everything people argue about at the breakfast table, the colour, the depth of flavour, whether it overpowers a sandwich, comes from that single stage at the end.
Unsmoked bacon is often called green bacon, which confuses everyone the first time they hear it. Nothing about it is green. The word simply means uncured by smoke, in the same way green timber means untreated, and it is the older and plainer of the two styles. Here is what each one actually tastes like, why home curing changes the comparison, and which one to make if you are curing your own.
What is the actual difference between smoked and unsmoked bacon?
Curing comes first and does the important work. Salt draws moisture out of the pork, firms the texture, seasons it through and preserves it. That is the stage that turns a piece of pork belly into bacon, and it is where the flavour of the seasoning gets in.
Smoking is a finishing step. Once the meat has cured, rinsed and dried, it is hung in cool smoke from smouldering hardwood for a period that can run from a few hours to a couple of days. The smoke lays down aromatic compounds on the surface, darkens the colour towards deep amber, and dries the outside a little further.
Traditional bacon smoking is cold smoking, meaning the meat is flavoured but not cooked. Hot smoking, the method behind smoked mackerel, cooks as it flavours. Either way, bacon is cooked before eating.
What does smoking add to the flavour?
Depth, mostly, and a savoury edge. Smoked bacon carries a woody, slightly bitter aromatic note that lingers after the salt and pork flavours have faded, and different woods pull it in different directions. Oak, the traditional British choice, gives a firm, rounded smokiness. Beech is lighter and cleaner. Fruit woods such as apple and cherry are gentler and faintly sweet.
Unsmoked bacon tastes more directly of pork and of whatever you cured it with. That is not a lesser thing, it is a different purpose. In a bacon sandwich where the bacon is the whole point, smoke can be wonderful. In a carbonara, a quiche, a risotto or anything with delicate flavours around it, unsmoked bacon lets the other ingredients speak, which is why so many Italian recipes specify pancetta, which is unsmoked cured belly.
As a rough guide: smoked for eating on its own or in a sandwich, unsmoked for cooking into something. Then ignore the guide, because this is mostly preference.
Where do streaky and back bacon come into it?
They are a separate question entirely, and mixing the two up is common. Smoked and unsmoked describes the process. Streaky and back describes the cut.
Streaky bacon is pork belly, layered with fat and famously good at crisping. Back bacon is pork loin, leaner, with the meaty eye and a rim of fat. Either cut can be smoked or unsmoked, so a shop can reasonably offer four different bacons from the same pig.
Our Bacon Making Kit is built around pork belly, and there is a practical reason for that. Belly is thinner, so it cures faster and more reliably at home than a thick loin does. If you want back bacon, the same cure and recipe work on a 500g pork loin joint with the skin removed. You supply the pork, the kit supplies the cure and the seasonings, which flavour your bacon three ways: chilli and garlic, juniper and fennel, and pancetta.
Why does home cured bacon behave differently in the pan?
Because most supermarket bacon is wet cured, injected with brine and pumped with water, which is exactly what you see leaking out as a grey liquid when it hits a hot pan. The rasher shrinks, steams rather than fries, and the edges never quite crisp.
Dry cured bacon has had moisture drawn out of it rather than pushed into it. It is firmer, more concentrated in flavour, and it fries without flooding the pan. That difference is much more noticeable than the smoked versus unsmoked question, and it is the main reason people who cure their own rarely go back.
The method is straightforward: rub the cure evenly into the pork belly, refrigerate it for the time given in the booklet, then rinse off the excess cure and pat it dry before air drying. Rinsing is not optional, since it is what stops the finished bacon being too salty. The bacon then air dries hanging in the fridge, and our trick is to hang it from the top shelf so it dangles into the door area where the tall bottles usually live, which is the one spot with room to spare.
By slicing time the belly is much firmer than it was raw, so a sharp kitchen knife handles it cleanly. The cure is a traditional dry mix of salt and sugar with sodium nitrite and sodium nitrate, which is what protects the meat while it cures, so follow the quantities and timings rather than improvising, keep it refrigerated throughout, and always cook it through before eating.
Should you try smoking bacon at home?
Our honest answer is not on your first batch, and not without the right equipment. Cold smoking means holding the meat in smoke while keeping it cool, which needs a proper cold smoker or smoke generator and careful attention to temperature. Improvising it in a barbecue on a warm day risks drifting into the range where you are neither smoking properly nor cooking properly, and that is not a place to guess.
The good news is that you lose nothing by skipping it. Our dry cure bacon kit uses a cold cure with no smoking involved: the meat cures and then air dries in the fridge over several days to develop its texture, with the whole process taking about a week, and no smoker or special equipment required at any point. The three seasonings do the flavour work instead, and juniper and fennel in particular gives you something no supermarket packet offers.
If smoking does grab you later, treat it as its own craft with its own reading and its own kit, and come to it once dry curing feels routine.
Smoked and unsmoked bacon FAQs
Is smoked bacon saltier than unsmoked?
Not inherently. Saltiness comes from the cure and how thoroughly it was rinsed off, not from the smoke. Smoked bacon can taste stronger overall, which people sometimes read as saltier.
What is green bacon?
It is simply another name for unsmoked bacon. Green here means untreated by smoke rather than anything to do with colour or freshness.
Which is better for a bacon sandwich?
Smoked, if you want the bacon to dominate, and unsmoked if you like the pork and the seasoning to come through. Both crisp beautifully when dry cured.
Can I make smoked bacon with a home curing kit?
The kit is designed as a complete method without smoking, and the bacon it makes is unsmoked. Adding a smoking stage means adding proper cold smoking equipment and the knowledge to run it safely.
How should I store home cured bacon?
Keep it refrigerated and use it within the timeframe in the booklet, or freeze it. Slice it or cut it into lardons before freezing and spread the pieces on a baking sheet first, otherwise you will be defrosting the whole joint every time you fancy a sandwich.
Fancy curing a belly of your own? Take a look at our meat making kits, hand-packed in Britain.
