5 Store-Bought Beef Bacon Brands, Ranked Worst To Best

Bacon has been a hot topic for a while now, with trends — that are sometimes delicious, sometimes utterly played out — sweeping the nation. And while I may find myself leaning more towards team sausage (if I have to choose), there's no denying the seductive quality of a nice strip of crispy bacon.

By definition, bacon is cured and smoked pork, most typically the pork belly, which has excellent fat marbling. But if you don't eat pork, you may feel like you're missing out on an incredibly common and delicious ingredient, the smells constantly teasing you at breakfast buffets and at dinner parties whenever the bacon-wrapped dates make their way around the room.

Thankfully, beef is a fantastic replacement. Let's be real — the turkey bacon just wasn't cutting it. Turkeys don't have nearly enough fat marbling to come close to mimicking the real deal; what you need is a replacement red meat that isn't pork but has a similar enough cut and flavor to achieve the same spectacular result. Beef is the answer. Beef belly, also called the navel or beef plates, when smoked and sliced, has near identical white strips of fat in between rich, red layers of meat. It cooks similarly, achieving crispy edges and a slightly fatty chew. The only question that remains is: which brand to buy? I've tested five major store-bought beef-bacon brands to narrow down the one I would buy again and again.

When I took the first strips out of this package of Arnold's Premium Smoked Beef Bacon, I noticed that they were disappointingly small. And, when cooked, they shrank further into child-sized pieces. This isn't necessarily a fault with the brand, though, as it may have just been the narrow end of the beef plate, which can happen with pork belly as well. The strips toward the end of the package got much bigger.

My main issue with this brand was the texture. On the first cook, it was rubbery, and when I cooked it longer to crisp up the edges, the chewy bite still didn't go away. I wonder if it doesn't smoke for as long, or as short, as some of the other brands I reviewed that achieved a great bite, but nonetheless, the texture was off-putting enough that I wouldn't purchase it again. This, combined with the fact that it is by far the most expensive product of the five brands (even more expensive than the Whole Foods option), made it a dealbreaker.

Wellshire Smoked Uncured Beef Bacon is sold at Whole Foods stores, and, being from Whole Foods, the package has a no antibiotics label. Interestingly, it does have a distinct flavor compared with every other brand I tried that is hard to place. It's almost got a gamey flavor, which for me isn't a good or a bad thing, but may be off-putting to some.

Coming out of the package, the slices are huge and inviting. They've got nice, ropy fat that holds together well and thick lines of meat. Once you put them in the oven, though, you can expect them to shrink by about 50%. This is especially disheartening considering you pay about a buck an ounce for the package and can watch your money shrink away before your eyes through the oven door. For me, there were just brands that offered better value for money, and that also had better flavor. But if you're a Whole Foods frequenter, you may find this package convenient to pick up.

Dean Halal Beef Breakfast Slices cost about $10 for a 12-ounce package, a very reasonable price for what is a solid-tasting beef bacon. It lacked some of the qualities of my top two, yet achieved a great middle ground when it came to texture, flavor, and price.

The flavor is salty, and the slices are nicely balanced with meat and fat. It gets a good crisp on it, although the texture will still be a bit chewier than a strip of pork bacon — but that's to be expected. The one drawback is that every piece in the package was a bit of a mess. The fat was congealing, and to separate the pieces, you had to dig your nails in a bit and pull them apart into awkward strips. This isn't necessarily a bad thing — beauty is in the eye of the beholder, after all — and could be entirely a fluke of this individual packet, seeing as the beef plate varies quite a bit from end to end. If what you're hoping for are picture-perfect bacon strips, you might be disappointed, but if you're going to candy your bacon and chop it up, then there's no problem here.

At $6.99 for a 10-ounce package, Godshall's Beef Bacon is the most affordable on this list. Especially considering the price, and even though it wasn't the price that made it take second place, it's fantastic. The slices are wide with two strips of beautiful red meat sandwiching a creamy white center. The strips don't congeal and stick together in the package, and are sliced in a way that helps them bake evenly.

The real highlight of this brand, though, and what bumped it into second place, is the texture. While the other brands may take some playing around with to achieve a perfect crunch (if you can achieve it at all), Godshall's cooked super evenly with a nice fatty center and crispy edges. The flavor wasn't quite as good as the first-place pick, but the texture was on point and most closely resembled that of pork bacon.

Winner winner, beef bacon dinner — Certified Angus Smoked Uncured Beef Bacon takes the crown. What immediately struck me about this brand from the very first bite was a slight hint of brown sugar. It's not in-your-face sweet, or stronger than the salt of the meat, but it's just enough to remind you of maple syrup on pancakes or brown sugar caramel. It was easily the best flavor of the bunch, perfectly balancing out the mouth-drying saltiness that came from tasting so many bacon brands.

The slices were wide with excellent marbling, the edges taking on a delightful crunch while retaining that melt-in-your-mouth creaminess. The 10-ounce package costs just over $9, making it mid-priced out of the brands on this list. Given that the price is reasonable, the texture is good, and the flavor is fantastic, it was an easy choice for first place. It's an ideal beef bacon for your non-traditional BLT, for gracing a breakfast plate paired with eggs and toast, or just for a tasty snack. You really can't go wrong.

To compile a selection for this ranking, I scoured the shelves of the great city of New York and was surprised to find that there aren't as many beef bacon brands out there as you might expect. But then, there isn't quite as much of a demand for beef bacon as there is for pork or turkey bacon (a great alternative if you don't like to eat red meat), and these brands seem to have the market covered.

Each of the brands I tested comes with instructions on the back of the package as to what temperature you should set your oven to and how long they should cook. But ultimately, everyone likes their bacon cooked a little bit differently, and you may need to experiment to find your sweet spot. I like my bacon cooked long enough to achieve a crunch on the edges, but not so long that you render out all of that wonderful, chewy fat in the middle — thus achieving a balance of textures.

I set my oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit and cooked each sample for at least 10 minutes, giving it a little longer for bigger slices. If you like your bacon crisped into submission, you'll want to go at least 13 minutes.