You know you are really eating a pig when you sit down to some Gloucester Old Spot. It is what I call a happy pink in colour, not too bright, and it has such flavour. One of the favourite dishes on our menu is a Gloucester Old Spot smoked bacon chop. They are a joy to eat. We just serve it with potatoes but we use the breed in other dishes.

People may not think there is any difference, but when you eat a rare breed, especially this one, it has such a fine texture and taste. We buy our Gloucester Old Spot from a farm in Gloucestershire and even when you see the meat you know immediately that it is a thing of beauty. Supermarket bacon is usually pink, wobbly and plastic looking, and it is anonymous, but when you go for a breed you know you are buying a name and getting real flavour.

The meat tends to have more fat on it, but that is where the flavour comes from. There is certainly no white stuff from saline water swimming off this bacon when it’s cooking. It also crisps well and the meat has integrity. As it is cured, it will be salty, but pleasurably so. The flesh on the rashers has a fine skin quality, is not dimply and is just what you’d expect from a pig that has lived its life outdoors. More people should try it.

I like it in a bacon sandwich and also with egg. The taste is just so rewarding and each week the smoked flavour is slightly different. It is such an adventure to eat Gloucester Old Spot.

Fergus Henderson is chef at St John, Clerkenwell

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