Last Thursday I started the morning in St. Louis, Missouri and by noon I had driven to California.
California, Missouri, that is.
The Missouri version of California has just over 4000 residents – much smaller than the state by the same name. But what they lack in population they make up for with cured meats. Burger’s Smokehouse produces approximately 750,000 hams, bacon, sausage and other specialty meats per year. But while the operation may be one of the largest country-style smokehouses in the United States, they still use the same traditional methods for curing their products that were used when the first Burger’s smokehouse was built in the 1920s. Burger’s was the first country cured meat company in the United States to go under Federal inspection in 1956. Since then they have continued to be an industry leader.
Burger’s sells two kinds of bacon – country bacon and city bacon. The country bacon is cured using the same decades old sugar cure recipe that has been used to cure Burger’s hams and bacon since the business started. The bacon is then smoked with hickory. The city bacon is wet cured using modern injection methods, and then the bacon is also smoked with hickory. The result is a milder, sweeter bacon.
Burger’s also makes a bacon product I had never heard of before visiting their facility. Country Ham Bacon is apparently an old Kentucky custom where you take a country cured ham, bone the ends, and slice the ham thin like country style bacon.
A pre-cooked version of Burger’s bacon is also available for purchase.
Visit the Burger’s Smokehouse website for more information about all of their products and to place an order.