Bacon is just bacon, right? Well, not really. Bacon comes in multiple glorious forms for you to fry, grill, roast or boil, and pretty much eat at every opportunity. Strictly speaking bacon is cured meat cut from the back, belly or side of a pig. All bacon is cured in either brine or salt to preserve it, but you’ll get different cuts and flavourings that distinguish each type. Everything tastes better with bacon, so here’s our guide to 11 different types of bacon and what to do with them…

Side bacon, also called streaky or American bacon, is well-trimmed pork belly that’s cured with a brine or a rub and then cold-smoked. It’s got streaks of fat running through each rasher, and is often slightly softer than back bacon.

Make the most of all that fat: place the rashers in a cold non-stick frying pan and cook over a low heat until the fat starts to melt. Increase the heat and cook for 2 minutes on each side. You can also grill streaky into crispy shards of bacon, which are delicious with pancakes. Streaky seals in moisture and adds flavour to a large cut of meat, so wrap it round your sausages or layer in a criss-cross pattern over your roast chicken.

For something meaty, nothing hits the spot like Marcus Wareing's Bacon Roly-Polies; perfect swirls of bacon and cheese wrapped up in pastry.

"I didn’t even know what a strata was – a layered casserole in the annals of American cuisine," says cookbook author Michael Ruhlman. "This one rocks. It’s basically a bacon-sausage-onion bread pudding (or side dish – it would be great with a big roasted bird!). I like it as a hearty breakfast when you have lots of mouths to feed." Try his bacon and sausage breakfast strata this weekend.

This moist bacon-wrapped chicken dish would work well with cottage bacon. Serve with mashed potato or crusty bread to dip in the sauce.

There are different cuts of bacon, just like with any meat. Back bacon is cut from the loin in the middle of the back. It's the most common you’ll see in a fry up, since it’s nice and meaty at the top with not too much fat. It’s sometimes called Canadian bacon by Americans when it's trimmed into rounds, without the backfat. 

Don’t cook back bacon under the grill, as it doesn’t have much fat on it and it will dry out as the juices run away. Pan fry, or for best results griddle on a griddle pan to get those classic, charred grill marks.

If you fancy adding a little extra sweetness and saltiness to your grilled cheese sandwich, this pretzel bacon grilled cheese with honey mustard will hit the spot. 

Chocolatier Paul A Young's favourite brunch sandwich is a combination of honey-cured bacon, rich dark chocolate and ripe tangy Stilton. Mouth-watering and satisfying.

You’ll see all bacon is either smoked or unsmoked. Smoked bacon has more flavour from the hot or cold smoking process. You can smoke bacon with different wood chips: Oak or hickory produce a stronger flavour, whereas applewood gives the bacon a mild, fruity finish.

Make the most of the subtle flavours in smoked bacon, and allow them to shine. Smoked bacon is best grilled and crispy, or served with creamy sauces which carry the smokiness. You can also fry smoked bacon with onions and use that as the base for a sauce, like a hearty stew.

James Martin makes a creamy mushroom sauce to serve with luxurious beef fillets and smoky, crispy bacon bits.

You can get dry- or wet-cured bacon: Dry-cured meat has a dry curing mix rubbed all over the joints, and is then left to cure for 14 days before being cut into rashers. Wet-cured bacon is cured in a liquid brine mixture. Dry-cured bacon is better for sandwiches, as it stays crispy and doesn’t give off as much water as wet cure.

You can cook dry-cured bacon pretty much any way you like, as it doesn’t give off a lot of water. It can dry out under a hot grill though, so try frying or griddling if you like it juicy.

Toast these smoky bacon cheese scones up for a breakfast or tea time treat.

Serve up this crispy, dry-cured bacon with a sweet potato hash and runny poached eggs for breakfast.

Lardons are small cubes or strips of fatty bacon, which can be smoked or unsmoked. Lardons might be cut from the belly or fatback, but they have three key functions: to add flavour and texture, and to provide fat for frying other ingredients. If you don’t have lardons, swap it out for pancetta or diced pieces of thick streaky bacon.

Pat dry the lardons, to remove any excess moisture and pre-heat a heavy based pan. Cook lardons on a low heat so the fat melts out, you can scoop the bacon out and use the melted fat to sauté vegetables, or keep cooking the bacon until it’s crispy. If you don’t have the patience to wait for the fat to melt, add a teaspoon of oil and you can crank the heat up a bit more. Avoid overcrowding the pan to stop the meat sweating.

Bacon, beef and beer – a classic. No shandy drinkers in sight for this great steak and ale pie from the Hairy Bikers, which is more British than Vera Lynn. Make sure you use bacon and steak that are well marbled with fat for flavour.

Dig into a bowl of happiness with this filling winter soup, including green lentils, orzo pasta and crispy bits of smoked lardon.

Pancetta is Italian-style unsmoked bacon cut from pork belly, which is cured with salt and aromatic spices. You’ll often see it sold as a slab or roll, but it can also be sliced paper thin, or cubed like lardons. Rolled pancetta is typical in northern Italy, while flattened pancetta is most often seen in central and southern Italy.

Wrap thin slices of pancetta around vegetables or meat before cooking – a bit like streaky bacon for pigs in blankets. Pancetta cubes can be swapped in for lardons and are best sautéed with onions or garlic for stews, soup, pasta, or risotto.

Make this hearty broad bean, courgette and pancetta salad in July and August when broad beans appear. Alternatively, you could use frozen broad beans or substitute them with peas. Chef Angela Hartnett recommends you buy a big chunk of pancetta and chop it up yourself – it stores in the fridge for weeks. 

Transform frozen peas into this glorious midweek meal, with crispy pancetta pieces, fresh mint and bowtie farfalle pasta

Speck can be eaten as it is, or lightly cooked for that crunchy texture. It’s originally from the mountainous Tyrol region of Italy, and has a subtle juniper flavour from the curing process. Speck is a cured, smoked cut from the pork shoulder, which means it’s meaty and versatile.

You don’t have to cook speck, but it works a lot like pancetta if you do. Fry it with a little oil to get it nice and crispy on a pasta dish, layer it on a pizza, wrap it round chicken breast or put it in a cheesy bake.

Up your breakfast game with these bacon and egg cups. This recipe uses pancetta, but you can swap in speck for a crispy, meaty finish

Strictly speaking, guanciale isn’t bacon at all, as it’s fat cut from the cheeks rather than the back, belly or side. But it's known as ‘jowl bacon’ and it’s often substituted with pancetta in pasta dishes when guanciale is hard to find. Guanciale is seasoned, dry cured, and usually spiced with aromatics. It’s most famous in the pasta dish, all’amatriciana, from the town of Amatrice in the middle of Italy. 

Gently cook guanciale on a low heat until the fat melts, and use it to fry vegetables or onions as the base of a pasta dish. It has an aromatic flavour that carries well through simple dishes.

Let guanciale’s subtle flavours shine in a simple pasta dish, like spaghetti cooked with garlic and red pepper flakes.

Collar bacon is a large joint, and is sometimes called pork rib-eye. It’s taken from the back of the neck and shoulder, so it has soft fats dispersed throughout the meat. Collar bacon has fallen out of favour in recent years, but it has more flavour than leaner cuts due to the darker meat and the marbling.

Because of the dispersed fat through the meat, you can grill or pan-fry collar bacon. If you have a whole piece, you’ll need to soak the collar overnight and then slow roast it in the oven, or treat it like gammon.

Try Anjum Anand’s Indian-spiced gammon recipe for a warm, sweet and spicy and richly-flavoured bacon main course. This recipe calls for gammon but it would work beautifully with collar bacon as well; simply substitute it for the same weight of collar bacon (taking the bone into consideration).

Cottage bacon is lean, round bacon made from pork shoulder instead of pork belly. It’s cut from a boneless pork shoulder, and then pressed, rolled and cured. Cottage bacon tastes and looks like ham; it can be sold pre-cooked, but more often than not, it's sold raw.

You can use cottage bacon in any recipe that uses back bacon, so it can be fried, baked, and even wrapped around grilled foods. It's also delicious with eggs. Cottage bacon is still a lean meat, so avoid overcooking it and drying it out.

Swap streaky bacon for cottage bacon to make a heartier, meatier version of chef Brian Turner's crispy bacon with mushroom pancakes.

Cottage bacon is the perfect size to wrap around potatoes before roasting.

Gammon the bottom piece of a side of bacon, including the hind leg. It is dry-salt or brine cured, and it can be smoked or unsmoked, and sold on or off the bone in steaks or slices. Like bacon, it needs to be cooked, but it’s much more robust so it can boiled as well as grilled. 
Note: Don’t confuse gammon and ham. A ham is sold cooked, while gammon is sold raw. 

As said before, while a ham is sold already cooked, a gammon is raw and must be cooked through. A whole gammon joint should be boiled in water (check the weight of your gammon to find out how long for) with spices and herbs – this water makes a great stock too. The gammon is then finished off in the oven, usually with a sticky glaze to get that crispy skin. Gammon steaks are best quick-fried in a frying pan until golden on each side.

Don’t just keep gammon for Christmas; this glorious chunk of bacon is an economical (and impressive) way to feed a crowd. Try it with this simple honey-glazed recipe.

What’s better than cauliflower cheese? Howsabout cauliflower cheese with crispy bacon in.