Tip of the day, instead of those overpriced low gram sealed packets by La Preferida or Llanquihue (and in the case of La Preferida, with a lot of mierda ingredients),
buy at the granel price at the fiambrería, jamón colonial chileno preferably with a nice line of fat like the Winter brand (usually cheaper and on offer due to the local brainwashed belief that animal fat is bad) and fry, bake or nuke to crisp just like bacon.
FYI, jamón colonial chileno recipe is based on the traditional way ham was preserved back in those “colonial” days.
Agree. They normally do the traditional way, but lately (before I left Chile) they introduced the American smoke flavor to them. Make sure you buy the “correct version”
Also, look out for the cheap meat version. I always look for the meat texture (indicating that they use a real chunk of meat) instead of the imitation that uses tiny pieces of meat (that they use air blowing off small meat pieces still clinging to the bone after cutting out the large chunk) and glue them together. They look almost the same.
My husband is a fan of Villa Baviera’s jamón pierna and likes to crisp it up like that. I do like my bacon sometimes, ham not so much. We are lucky that up the road in Alto Jahuel we have Carnicería Don Rubén where Don Rubén usually smokes his own bacon. One time when he was on vacation, he brought in a big chunk of bacon from another supplier for his assistants to sell. It was still much better than the prepackaged supermarket stuff.
