how is bacon “smoked” but still raw?
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The meat is cured as well with either salt or with a curing salt, usually a nitrite of some kind. Cold smoking by itself is rarely done. The meat will still spoil
Think of it as the meat is not cooked – it is not subjected to high temps. It is cured with salt which draws out moisture and you get the bacon to a certain % of moisture loss. At this point it is very difficult to get anything to grow in it – although it can still spoil albeit far more slowly. Salt curing is like making beef jerky but not as dry. You dry out the meat but not as far as like making jerky.
Curing with a nitrite salt is another method and often combined with salting. Nitrite “fixes” the hemoglobin chemical present in the meat which alters the taste and appearance. Nitrite is why bacon is rosy pink even after cooking. Corned beef is also pink and cured with nitrite. Thanksgiving hams are the same pink and cured with nitrite. If you take a steak and cook it well done, it turns gray. if you cure a steak with nitrite and cook it, it will stay pink. Nitrite preserves the original pink color of the meat & gives a unique flavor. Its a preservative that lengthens shelf life.
The cold smoking step is at the end of this process to give flavor to the meat. SMoke is also naturally antiseptic and a preservative. The outside and to a certain depth is infiltrated with smoke and related compounds forming a preservative crust.
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