Yes, we have bacon in Poland 🙂 And we love it.
Seriously though – it is a bit different than English bacon. First of all, it’s fattier. The closer resemblance which comes to mind is your streaky bacon. Yes, in Poland bacon is always full of streaks of white fat. Sometimes there’s more fat than meat, however, that is changing now due to the commercialisation and westernization of our people and food industry. And I must admit I don’t like it. I know, of course, all those arguments concerning health attributed to fat (especially white animal fat) but I could give you some quotations from respectable British experts (medical experts) who are now questioning the fat-phobia aroused in the West in the past few decades. Never mind. For me, Polish bacon has to contain some fat, making it taste the way it should.
The second big difference is that it is rarely sold raw. You can buy pieces of fresh bacon from a butcher but usually, it comes either heavily smoked or adequately cooked. And then, in both situations, it is ready to eat straight away however we can still use it for further processing in various recipes. Be aware of cheaper variations of smoked bacon from big brands that were usually processed by chemical smoking. Not like I’m going to claim any toxic characterisation – these products have been approved by health safety authorities – but I don’t regard their taste as equal to naturally processed food. But maybe I am becoming a bit snobbish.