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Hog Jowl is the cheek cut off the face of a pig.

It has a lot of fat with a few streaks of meat in it.

It can be smoked and cured, and used as you would bacon or salt pork. You can buy it fresh, or cured and smoked.

In North America, it is usually just incorporated into sausage. It is usually only sold in its own right in retail stores in the American south, where it comes as neatly-trimmed squares in sealed packages. In England, it is used to make Bath Chaps from; in Italy, it becomes Guanciale.

Various uses:

• use for flavouring and mouth feel. When cooked, it lets off lots of fat.
• add to cooked greens for flavour
• add to baked beans
• some people like frying buckwheat pancakes up in it
• you can fry it up as you would strips of bacon

Jowl Bacon is made from this. It is usually smoked and cured, unlike a similar cut of meat called "guanciale." At home, people would do their own. but what they'd hang up in the meathouse would be the whole lower half of the pig's head, including jawbone and teeth.

Substitutes
American bacon (aka streaky bacon), bacon fat, lard, Guanciale, pancetta.

Storage
Freezes well.

Also called:

See Also:

Bath Chaps, Guanciale

Other entries for: Pork

Bacon, Barrow Hog, Berkshire Pigs, Butcher Hog, Casertano Pigs, Crown Roast, Fore Hock, Fresh Ham, Gilt Hog, Ground Pork, Ham, Hog Jowl, Iberian Pigs, Kurobuta Pork, Lard, Mortadella, Oreilles de Crisse, Pickled Pork, Pig's Feet, Pork Belly, Pork Brawn, Pork Chops, Pork Crackling, Pork Cubes, Pork Cuts Illustrated -- British, Pork Hocks, Pork Leg, Pork Loin, Pork Ribs, Pork Rinds, Pork Shoulder, Pork Souse, Pork, Prime Collar, Salt Meat, Sow, Spare Ribs, Stag Hog, Streak of Lean, Tasso, Ventrèche, Zampino

Other entries for:

Meat
Affettati, Beef, Buffalo, Cap On / Cap Off, Game, Goat, Institutional Meat Purchase Specifications, Minced Meat, Offal, Paillards, Potted Meats, Poultry, Roasts, Sausages, Sheep, Steak, Veal, Venison, Yak