What it the process for double smoked bacon? Or double smoked anything for that matter? What makes it double smoked? I have made the Maple Cured Bacon from Charcuterie many times. Saw double smoked bacon, pork chops, etc. at a german deli the other day and was wondering what the deal is.

Hey Gerry!

I suppose there are a couple of different ways to do it... For the bacon out of Charcuterie you could cold smoke it, then hot-smoke it as per the recipe. I'd be concerned if you tried to follow the Charcuterie recipe twice though; I.e. Hot-smoking it twice, even if you cooled it in between as you are significantly altering the structure of the proteins in the meat when you hot smoke it so to hot smoke it twice then cool it to slice it and cook it later not only presents a texture issue but most likely a food safety issue at that point.

Personally - double smoke sounds nice, but in addition to the fact that it definitely IS possible to oversmoke food, it also serves to cover up off flavors in old meat that the butcher is trying to get rid of... I mean at that point, can you even still taste the meat?

I was hoping Kevin would chime in here as I recall he knew more about this than me. However, he said something to me along the lines of "you'll know if its double smoked because you won't want to eat it alone because of its intense smoke." In other words its designed to be added into a base for soups or sauces. I scored some double smoked bacon in nyc and it was good and wasn't overly smokey, so I'm not quite sure what the dealis.