Last Thursday, I spent part of the day at one of my favorite bacon producing companies in the United States. Swiss Meats is located in the small town of Hermann, Missouri, which is about 80 miles west of St. Louis. The surrounding scenery is quite beautiful – rolling green hills alternate between farmland and forests. But the best thing about this part of the country are the cured meats. The first time I tasted Swiss Meats bacon was through the Grateful Palate’s Bacon of the Month Club. Their honey cured bacon instantly became a favorite of mine. So when I was planning my cross country drive and determining where I would stop along the way, Swiss Meats was at the top of the list.
Mike Sloan, the second generation owner and operator of Swiss Meats, gave me a tour of the facility which is a bit more technologically advanced than some of the bacon curing outfits I had visited during the previous two days.
As a side note, it’s kind of interesting how my bacon tour of the country ended up coming together because I somehow managed to schedule my smokehouse visits in a way that allowed me to see a wide range of smokehouses starting with a small operation in a brick building in the backyard of the family home (Scott Hams) to an operation that had recently upgraded to a newer building but was still producing on a relatively small scale (Broadbent Hams) to a mid-sized operation using high-tech machinery (Swiss Meats). And then my next visit, which I’ll tell you more about tomorrow, was to Burger’s Smokehouse which is a much larger scale producer of country hams and bacon. I really didn’t plan for my tour to progress that way, but that it did has made this entire learning process that much more interesting.
Anyway, back to Swiss Meats. Even though their approach to making bacon still focuses on traditional methods, they take advantage of state-of-the-art machinery to make the process much more efficient. The tumbler they use to cure the meat and add flavor was one of the coolest things I was able to see on the tour of their facility – they put the bacon, curing mixture and seasonings into a large steel tumbler that tenderizes, cures and flavors several hundred pounds of meat to perfection. Their smokehouse is also a large steel contraption that smokes the meat to exact specifications without the need to manually monitor the process.
All of this technology, along with Swiss Meats expertise when it comes to curing and smoking meat, are what make their bacon some of the best in the country. If you’ve never tasted Swiss Meats bacon before, I strongly urge you to visit their website and place an order. If you live in Missouri, go say hi and check out their store in person – they recently remodeled the store and it is quite nice with a large selection of meats to choose from. As I mentioned before, the honey bacon is my favorite, but their grand champion bacon and pepper bacon are also very popular. They also have a nice selection of sausages, including one made with bacon and beef. But regardless of what you order, I guarantee you won’t be disappointed.