This type of product is often called "bacon scraps" also "bacon pieces" or "bacon off-cuts" etc. The quality can vary a lot, sometimes you can get some good deals. Farmers markets are good places to look. It depends what kind of bacon factory they come from. Basically a meat processing company will take a side of bacon and slice it into rashers, back, streaky, middle, etc, and there will always be leftover bits and pieces. Rather than throw them away they will put them in other food products like pies, pasta meals, cans of beans and so on, or sell them to other companies making those things. They will also put them in those packs you see in supermarkets and butchers shops. Ham offcuts are good things to get.
It seems kind of dumb to call it cooking bacon, I mean what else do you do with bacon? I see what they mean though. You can just cook it like regular bacon (it tastes the same) or use it in dishes with other things although it is quite good just fried and mixed with canned baked beans and maybe a dash of hot sauce. You can put it in pies or pasta bakes or cut it up very small and fry it crisp and put it in a salad with red kidney beans and sesame oil dressing. Or bake it with cheese and pasta. One thing I used to do was cut it into even smaller pieces, fry it crisp, (with a good healthy dash of Tabasco once it was sizzling!) then drain off some of the fat, add chopped up onion, garlic, chunks of red or green pepper, and cook them a while. Finally add some canned red kidney beans and serve with boiled white rice or maybe add this to the pan and mix it all up.
There are zillions of bacon scrap recipes on the Web, like this one
Bacon Scrap pie
http://www.getstuffed.info/baconscrap.htmlJust Google for "bacon scrap recipes".
Good with peas in a soup.
