T&E Meats Now Offers Value-Added Processing Services for Bacon and Ham

T&E Meats is now offering processing services for creating certain smoked meat products – specifically, ham and bacon.  We do a traditional cure using “pink salt” (sodium nitrite), and we also cure products using celery powder as a source of nitrite, which are then labelled “Uncured” Bacon or “Uncured” Ham, for obscure regulatory reasons.

The following products are available: pork bellies as Smoked Slab Bacon or Smoked Sliced Bacon; boneless pork loins as Smoked Canadian Bacon, and boneless hams as Smoked Ham.  The hams can be halved or quartered, but not sliced into deli-style lunch meats.  When bellies are processed as sliced bacon, a certain amount of product will also be labelled as “Bacon Ends & Pieces”.

Traditional curing costs $2.50/lb. and “uncured” products using celery powder cost $3.25/lb. Charge is based on “Green Weight” of meat prior to curing & smoking.  There is a $.50 discount for whole slab bacon sides.

As of this date (April 5, 2019) T&E offers only these products.  We will continue to develop product recipes, and anticipate offering processing services for additional products in the future.  Please note that products such as snack sticks, hot dogs, bologna, smoked sausage, etc. are considered “Ready to Eat”, or RTE, products, and to produce those products under inspection involves mandatory listeria testing and additional inspection staff scrutiny, which involve additional costs and time.  Our current bacon and ham offerings are considered “Ready to Cook”, not RTE, which is one reason we do not offer sliced ham as a deli-style meat (please do not ask for this).

We will alert our customers as we have additional products available in the future.  Please note – as of now, we assume that we will be offering these newer products initially as Locker, “Not for Sale” items while we fine-tune our processes, as these do not involve additional inspection requirements.