One of my boyfriend's co-workers,* Brian Lagerstrom, makes his own bacon. I had never really thought of bacon as something you might make at home, but there you have it. So Boyfriend came home the other day with this exciting package:
And we fried it up and had it for breakfast.**
Oh wow was it good. I'm gonna be honest, despite keeping this blog for so long, I haven't spent much time thinking about the intricacies of bacon's flavor. How thickly sliced it is, what recipes you can use it in, sure, but the range of taste notes - not so much. I first began to consider it when we did a fry-off between the bacon from Rich's, the Polish store down the street from us, and some from Butcher and Larder.*** Then I noticed that sometimes when I get bacon at crappy diners, it tastes like shoe leather. So I've started paying more attention.
ANYWAYS. This bacon was delicious. The perfect balance of salty and sweet, with a wonderful meatiness to it. Toothsome and quite succulent. There were definitely some good juniper and herb flavors, but they weren't overpowering. It tasted like bacon. Bacon this good should just be fried and eaten, not used for cooking, so that it can be properly savoured. It's awesome.
If you want to acquire some of this fabulous stuff, head over to his etsy page, where you can get a pound for the astonishingly reasonable price of $7. Let me give you that link again: HERE BE TASTY BACON. Come, my child.
*If you're wondering, they both work at (Michelin-starred) Sepia.
**He fried the bacon, I made the eggs (scrambled eggs with green chilis and cheddar). You may be surprised to learn that I am terrible at frying bacon, and almost always burn it - especially if I'm cooking for my boyfriend.
***I probably should've posted about that. Not at all surprisingly (if you know us), I preferred the former, Better Half the latter. It wasn't really a scientific study though, because the Polish bacon was sliced super thin, and the Butcher and Larder bacon was quite thick, so that affected the eating experience. But flavor played a role as well. To me, the Polish bacon tasted... like what bacon should taste like. I dunno. To my sweet baby, it had a strong juniper flavor that he wasn't wild about. In contrast, B&L's pork tasted like it should to him, whereas to me it had a carmel kind of sweetness that I wasn't wild about. No offense to B&L, because I love their meats.
And we fried it up and had it for breakfast.**
(We cut the slices in half so they'd fit in the pan. Some bacon curls up like those mood-reading red fish when you do that, but this stuff was solid. But not so thickly sliced that it took half an hour to cook. Just right.)
Oh wow was it good. I'm gonna be honest, despite keeping this blog for so long, I haven't spent much time thinking about the intricacies of bacon's flavor. How thickly sliced it is, what recipes you can use it in, sure, but the range of taste notes - not so much. I first began to consider it when we did a fry-off between the bacon from Rich's, the Polish store down the street from us, and some from Butcher and Larder.*** Then I noticed that sometimes when I get bacon at crappy diners, it tastes like shoe leather. So I've started paying more attention.
ANYWAYS. This bacon was delicious. The perfect balance of salty and sweet, with a wonderful meatiness to it. Toothsome and quite succulent. There were definitely some good juniper and herb flavors, but they weren't overpowering. It tasted like bacon. Bacon this good should just be fried and eaten, not used for cooking, so that it can be properly savoured. It's awesome.
If you want to acquire some of this fabulous stuff, head over to his etsy page, where you can get a pound for the astonishingly reasonable price of $7. Let me give you that link again: HERE BE TASTY BACON. Come, my child.
*If you're wondering, they both work at (Michelin-starred) Sepia.
**He fried the bacon, I made the eggs (scrambled eggs with green chilis and cheddar). You may be surprised to learn that I am terrible at frying bacon, and almost always burn it - especially if I'm cooking for my boyfriend.
***I probably should've posted about that. Not at all surprisingly (if you know us), I preferred the former, Better Half the latter. It wasn't really a scientific study though, because the Polish bacon was sliced super thin, and the Butcher and Larder bacon was quite thick, so that affected the eating experience. But flavor played a role as well. To me, the Polish bacon tasted... like what bacon should taste like. I dunno. To my sweet baby, it had a strong juniper flavor that he wasn't wild about. In contrast, B&L's pork tasted like it should to him, whereas to me it had a carmel kind of sweetness that I wasn't wild about. No offense to B&L, because I love their meats.
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