When I was asked whether I would like to try Gamze Smokehouse's Gold Bacon and chat to Brendan Gamze about the process behind it as well as the philosophy behind the family owned and operated Smokehouse, I was thrilled. Gamze Smokehouse was started by Felix Gamze, Brendan's father, who migrated to Australia with his parents as a boy, went to school before starting an apprenticeship in butchery. Felix was ahead of his time, enjoying experimenting with different ways of preserving and curing and smoking to avoid using chemicals, as well as seeking out ethically produced local meat for his products. The Gamze Gold Bacon came out of a round table discussion about how to make the best bacon possible. They started with the pig, usingfree-range, black rare breedporkfrom a regenerative farm on the Limestone Coast. The pigs are finished on a mixture of acorns and macadamias for an ultra-rich taste, then brined in Three Bays mineral water, Murray River pink salt and manuka honey before being double cold smoked over retired wine barrels. This produces a highly aromatic bacon with a complex caramelised flavour profile that is totally unique. It is finished with edible gold leaf. Gamze are producing a very limited amount of this bacon and releasing it on 30 August in time for Fathers' Day and World Bacon Day, so if I were you I would be getting onto this right away!
Conversation with a chef: Hi Brendan. I'm excited to hear about this amazing bacon.
Brendan Gamze: I'm happy to share the story with you.
I've just been watching some videos of you eating the delicious bacon, and it looks pretty amazing and it sounded really good sizzling in the pan.
It's a really great product and it is different to anything that's been done before. It's exciting to have other people try it and experience it as well.
Absolutely. So talk me through it. Is this the first time you've done this gold bacon?
It is. We were just experimenting, as we do. We are a small family business in Wangaratta and that gives us the opportunity to do different things and we were just talking and experimenting with our team about how good can we make bacon. We wanted to get the very best ingredients that we could get our hands on and to make it in a way that hadn't been done before. All those things that we thought, well, it'd be cool if we did this and it would taste really good if we did that. Then we thought, well, why don't we actually put it together and make the product. That's how it all came about. We're only making it in a relatively small batch, so there'll be 500 packs, 400 grams in total for each pack. It's because it's such a unique product and the pork that we're using is so unique as well. It is only able to be made in a small quantity, which I think gives it a bit of extra intrigue as well.
The campaign has certainly been very intriguing. You've had little reveals along the way, which adds to the spice, but can you talk me through the process? It really starts with the pig, doesn't it, the way that they've been farmed and what they've been fed.
That's right. We drew a bit of inspiration from the Spanish Jamon, how they raise their pigs. We have an awesome grower in Limestone Pork that we've been working with for many years. I spoke to Glenn Jones, who's the owner of the business about what we could do differently, I suggested finishing the pigs on acorns? And he came up with the idea of finishing it on a blend of acorns and macadamias to give it a good Australian feel with the macadamias.
What do the acorns bring to it? That's what they use for the Jamon?
That's right. That's what they use and it gives the meat and the fat of the pig a nutty flavour and a different flavour. In this case we've added the macadamia and they are an oily nut as well, so it does give a really good texture and different depth of flavour in that as well. They're finished for the last six weeks on the nuts. They're a black pig, and they're farmed on the Limestone Coast in South Australia. It's a regenerative farm and it's a free range farm, so they're the highest of ethical welfare for the animal and the environment as well. Regeneratively farmed means taking care of the environment, free range means taking care of the animal, and then giving it a special diet for the last six weeks really enhances the flavour profile of a black pig. These are heritage bred pigs. They are bred for their flavour and not to grow quickly, like you'd normally see with pink land race, they're called the pink ones that you'd normally see in the media. Those pigs are bred to grow quickly and, and are specific for the meat market where these guys are bred for their flavour.
We’ve used the best possible water; Three Bays mineral water from Mornington. We’ve used Murray River Pink Salt, which gives it an amazing flavour, and manuka honey from the peninsula as well. We just wanted to find the best possible ingredients and have them as local as we could get. We brine the pork in that solution for a week. Traditionally in our other products we use an Australian hardwood blend to smoke over, but what we’ve done here is we’ve changed it, we’ve enhanced it, we’re using retired red wine barrels which we have chipped. They’re oak barrels that have spent their lives holding and maturing red wine, and we’re cold smoking over that and doing a double smoke for an extended period of time. ~ Brendan Gamze, Gamze Smokehouse
When the meat comes to you is the first step the brining?
Yes, so when it come to us, we make a special brine. At Gamze Smokehouse, all of our products are chemical free. We've replaced all the commonly used chemical ingredients with natural alternatives. That's something that we've brought into this product as well. We use honey as our sweetener and obviously salt's part of the preserving process. It's based in a liquid brine. We've used the best possible water; Three Bays mineral water from Mornington. We've used Murray River Pink Salt, which gives it an amazing flavour, and manuka honey from the peninsula as well. We just wanted to find the best possible ingredients and have them as local as we could get. We brine the pork in that solution for a week. Traditionally in our other products we use an Australian hardwood blend to smoke over, but what we've done here is we've changed it, we've enhanced it, we're using retired red wine barrels which we have chipped. They're oak barrels that have spent their lives holding and maturing red wine, and we're cold smoking over that and doing a double smoke for an extended period of time.
Wow, that's amazing. It feels like one of those times you were all sitting around the table going, how amazing can we make this?
That's right. It really snowballed from there. It is cold smoking it too. For our normal bacon and hams we do a hot smoke. It is what you'd see in the store, but what we've done with this product is we've done it by cold smoking. And what that's given us is – for example, when someone comes to our factory or drives past and they talk to us, they say, oh, I could really smell the, the great aromas coming from your factory. What were you cooking that day? I'm always trying to remember what we were cooking, and because I'm here every day, you don't notice it as much, but other people do. But then when we were cooking this cold smoked product, you really get that experience there because it's been cooked for the first time when you get it home. So it's giving the customer an experience with aromatics. When they're cooking it on their fry pan, it's giving them the experience we get here every day at the smokehouse when the products are in the smoker and cooking. That was a really cool byproduct that we didn't expect as well.
Absolutely. And the gold aspect?
The gold aspect, well we just thought it was opulent in all those ways, so we wanted to give it a presentation on shelf that reflected the high end and the opulence of the product. We wanted it to stand out on the shelf in the packaging. We wanted to elevate it from the presentation as well because this product is a cold smoke product, it is quite difficult to present really nicely because it's more of a raw product, but when you cook it, it firms up nicely. We just wanted something to give it a bit more of a nice presentation.
I couldn't quite hear on the video, but is it actual gold leaf?
Edible gold leaf, yes. Just for the presentation.
Thank you so much. I can't believe I'm getting such an incredible delivery tomorrow. I can't wait. I saw Sarah cooking it on Instagram and she was saying you didn't need to put any extra oil on the pan. What's the best way to cook it?
Just use a non-stick pan.Well that's what we did in the video. When you're cooking it, as I say, you're getting those really good aromatics in there and youd cook it probably a bit slower than what you normally would because it's honey that's the sweetener in the brine and it will caramelize quickly. So just keep your eye on it. You can just keep turning it and you can make it as crispy as you like. But we've found that the flavours are released a little bit more when you don't cook it to crispy. It's just a nice caramelization all round. You want to render the fat out a little bit. because you don't want to be chewing on the fat, but you want to render that fat nicely to get the nice balance.
I can't wait. And so people order from now but it is available on August the 30th, is that right?
We've hand selected some of our retailers, so Gamze Smokehouse, we supply over 400 outlets across Australia with our retail line of small goods. We've got a couple of retailers in South Australia, then we've got heaps in Victoria, heaps in New South Wales and we do Harris Farm as well there. And then up in Queensland also. So we've got three Harris Farm stores, then we've got two independent stores in Queensland, two independent stores in in Sydney and two in Melbourne. And then we'll have some obviously here at the factory that will be able to provide people that can't access those stores, people that are interstate or a bit more local but they'll only have limited numbers as well. All stores are going to release on the 30th of August. And that's obviously in line with Father's Day the next day and international Bacon Days the day after. It's going to be a very exciting time.
How perfect. All those dads will be really crossing their fingers that they're getting the gold bacon. Amazing.
We’re excited to share it and we’ve made the claim that it’s Australia’s best bacon, but it’s not only in the taste, Gamze Gold is a holistic approach. It’s the best for the environment because of the regenerative farm. It’s the best for the animal because of the free range aspect. It’s the best ingredients, the best smoking methods. It’s a holistic thing. The end product and the taste – obviously taste is very subjective for everyone. It’s a product that is different and has a lot more complexity of flavours than bacon that people would have eaten in the past. ~ Brendan Gamze, Gamze Smokehouse
So it's a real family affair at Gamze. I was reading about your father Felix, who came out and carried on the family tradition from Slovenia because a lot of his family are butchers as well?
His uncle in Slovenia was, that's right. Dad came across with his parents when he was young from Slovenia and they settled as migrants here in Wangaratta. Dad started his butchering apprenticeship really young and learned from all the multiculturalism here as well around Wangaratta, because there were a lot of immigrants that came here. They were at Bonegilla in Wodonga. They colonised a lot of here. And there are obviously a lot of Italians up in the King Valley. Dad played football up there and he carried on the tradition and being in this area in the northeast there was a lot for him to learn and he started making his own small goods through the butcher shop and made those for a long time. I've been on board with dad and the business for about 13 or 14 years now. My background was, I was in in finance and I was studying my MBA and took more of an interest in helping dad do stuff in his business. I decided that this is where we were going to grow and so my wife and I moved back to Wangaratta from Melbourne and the rest is history.We've got a business now that's just focuses on manufacturing small goods. We're not in the retail butcher shops anymore. We make some amazing products and send them as far and wide as we can.
Well, that real effort to be chemical free and to have sought out those alternatives like celery salt and rosemary and so on, it's a bold move, but I think it's a really important move in this day and age to be offering that.
Yes, and I've always thought when I look back that Dad was ahead of his time in the industry. He employed a chef long before any other butchers were doing that and started doing meals and value adds at his butcher shop. Then it just transferred into the way he was making his small goods. He had customers come and some of them were celiac, some of them had food allergies, some of them were allergic to the chemical nitro or just wanted to eliminate chemicals altogether. And someone else would probably say, well no, this is how I make it, go away. But dad was always keen to experiment and try things and he tried for a long time to produce a product that people wanted to buy that was chemical free. He teamed up and made some good contacts in the industry and with some food scientists and came up with a recipe of his that did that. It was the same with the free range stuff. People were inquiring and the thinking around food was more, okay, well we want it to be ethically farmed and local and so dad sourced a grower to grow the free range pigs and ethically farm them. It was his work and in response to his customers here in Wangaratta that led him down that path. When I joined him and we took the retail product to market, it took off because that's what people wanted and it was because he listened.
Absolutely. It must be so immensely satisfying too, thinking about you changing from a career in finance to working in what's really an artisanal and very community based business. I love that.
It is completely different to what I was doing, but at the same time, I grew up in the butcher shop helping dad when I was a kid and he's retired now, but he was one of the hardest working people that I ever knew. He'd be gone in the morning before we'd get up and he'd get home late at night and the chance we'd get to see him was on the weekends. So we'd go into the butcher shop and be there with him in the mornings and we'd just do whatever he needed to, to help him. He'd make rissoles and you'd clean up and that type of thing just hang out with him. I grew up doing what I could to help dad and he had catering and extensions of his business, so we'd go and do catering jobs, birthdays and weddings and 21sts together after that. I always had that interest and the experience in that area and I didn't know it was going to happen and neither did he, but one day I came back and worked with him on a more permanent basis. So it was good.
Oh, it's wonderful. Thank you so much. And I'm so grateful that I'm going to get to taste this bacon tomorrow. But how great to hear the story. I'm such a firm believer in getting things from the source, and getting it right from the source. And I guess that idea of the love that people put into food and perhaps we also benefit as well eating such wholesomely produced food. Thank you so much Brendan for explaining it all to me and also for the bacon.
We're excited to share it and we've made the claim that it's Australia's best bacon, but it's not only in the taste, Gamze Gold is a holistic approach. It's the best for the environment because of the regenerative farm. It's the best for the animal because of the free range aspect. It's the best ingredients, the best smoking methods. It's a holistic thing. The end product and the taste – obviously taste is very subjective for everyone. It's a product that is different and has a lot more complexity of flavours than bacon that people would have eaten in the past. We really hope that people enjoy it and it's very exciting.