The Bacon Poll

Nope - That’s the Marag Dubh - Stornoway Black Pudding. Done to perfection! :slight_smile:

The mushrooms, bacon and fresh Spelt bread is another bacon option.

Here’s a Spelt loaf I baked earlier - 60/30 wholegrain/spelt, to keep the lightness. :slight_smile:

http://u1.ipernity.com/4/05/79/1470579.bc9811c0.1024.jpg

Pickled peaches and pears.

Uh oh, Tisha, you might wanna close your eyes now, it’s not bread at all. It’s blood pudding! :open_mouth: :smiley: Thanks for clearing that up, mobo. I knew it couldn’t be spelt!

BTW, the spelt bread looks beautiful! I’d love a piece right now! :slight_smile:

Bella

Pigs blood pudding at that.

I knew that, GT! :wink:

Here’s a little food for thought. The article below is taken from The Bacontarian. :smiley:

Archive for the ‘Not Quite Bacon’ Category

bBacon - a review, and some theological musings

Tuesday, January 3rd, 2006

My wife, the Velvateen Rabbi, has been taking a course this semester (in her ultimate pursuit of a rabbinic degree) called “Deep Ecuminism”. The aim of the course is to recognize similarities between different faiths and open opportunities for dialogue between those who follow different belief systems.

In that spirit, I’ve been thinking lately about ways Bacontarians can reach out to our brothers and sisters who keep kosher or halal. How can we share our joy in the LARD with those whose forbids them to consume pork?
I think I may have stumbled upon the solution.

Beef bacon, or as we’ve been calling it around our house – bBacon (pronounced “buh-BA-con”.)


It looks like bacon. Certainly more so than turkey bacon or various forms of tofu-related “facon”. The main visual dissimilarity comes out when you try to separate pieces of the raw meat – the fat layer on bBacon is more fragile than on pork bacon, and tends to expand into fat lacework if you pull it too hard.


It cooks like bacon. It cooks slowly, evenly and isn’t prone to scorching, like turkey bacon. It gives off LOTS of fat, if you cook it long enough to get strips good and crunchy. (Conveniently, I’d just cooked a kilo of real bacon before cooking 340g of bBacon. I saved the LARD from the former and the suet from the latter, and the volumes of fat yielded appear to be roughly proportional.)

Observant jews will eat it. No observant Muslims were available for our tests, but Margaret, described it as “sinfully delicious, yet halakhically correct”. (No, the Velveteen Rabbi doesn’t keep kosher. She, too, is an observant bacontarian.)

bBacon is described on the package as “cured and smoked beef plate”. Beef plate is also known as “flank” or “hanger” steak, a fatty cut of meat that tastes wonderful when marinated and served as fajitas. The high fat content makes it work as a fried meat – leaner cuts wouldn’t yield sufficient fat to cook properly. The bBacon I tasted was produced by Gwaltney, a proud old Virginia-based ham producer. Smithfield, Virginia, where the company is based, claims to have produced acorn-fed ham since 1627 – Gwaltney has been a going concern since 1870, and is part of Smithfield Foods, the only Fortune 500 company I know of whose web splash page via an attractively spiral cut ham. In other words, these people understand bacon.

And they evidently understand bBacon as well. The bBacon I tasted was smoky, but not artifically so, pleasantly salty, much less sweet than many bacons, an excellent balance of meat and fat, and, frankly, pretty damned delicious. Given a choice between run-of-the-mill, storebought, presliced bacon and bBacon, I’d likely go with the bBacon, as it cooks more consistently than most cheap bacon I’ve sampled. It’s not quite the religious experience a hand-cut piece of expertly smoked pork bacon is, but it’s not even in the same ballpark as pale imitators like turkey bacon.

Which opens some interesting questions: if it looks like bacon, cooks like bacon, tastes a whole lot like bacon, but is made of cow, not pig… is it bacon? And if so, what does this mean for our faith – nay, for our very way of life?
____________________________________

I do consider beef bacon to be bacon. They process it the same way. It’s just not the same joy as pork bacon, lol. The above is streaky bacon, the cut that’s most readily available in the US whether it be beef or pork. What part of the cow the bacon comes from and whether it’s uncured/cured depends on the brand, some do both. Anyways, it’s an option for people who don’t care for pork, turkey or facon bacon. :slight_smile:

Bella

I use spelt to, I just thought it was burned (snort) :stuck_out_tongue:

EWWWWWW Gag, LOL Go with the bacon Mobo it the lesser of two evils. Your spelt loaf looks nice though.

Its delicious - really! And lots of Iron, minerals and soluble fibre from the oatmeal. :smiley:

Has anyone mentioned Lorne Sausage yet?

http://www.heraldscotland.com/polopoly_fs/lorne-sausage-1.930252!image/2682490661.JPG_gen/derivatives/landscape_300/2682490661.JPG

:slight_smile:

Don’t forget Whale Bacon, if you are in Japan, or maybe Norway/Iceland:

http://luna.pos.to/whale/img/t_soc.jpg

And thanks to having once had to work with the IWC - I have tasted it. Delicious! :o :frowning:

Bacon Mints Bacon Flavored Mints
Accoutrements Gummy Bacon Candy
Accoutrements Bacon Lollipop
Bacon Gumballs - Single Tin

European bacon, it’s made from higher, less fatty part of the pig than American, more meat.

The best thing to come out of Romania, besides me when I left, was the breakfast I had there. The bacon was off the hook delicious!

I do love Bacon. But, in addition, I respect Bacon, which is why I don’t buy it anymore. I make it myself.

Now thats real bacon :smiley: No hormones or nitrates just good old natural hog meat. I am not a big fan of bacon simply because I got spoiled eating real bacon as a child on the farm and all the ones sold commercially taste funny to me. My brother doesn’t raise pigs and its hard to find real bacon around these parts. Local grass fed meat which is out of this world compared to commercial crap is not hard to find. I have two farms who can supply it for me but they only raise cows and chickens.

Tisha

Tisha, I do use nitrites - it’s just a good way to make sure I don’t die from botulism. Most commercially produced ‘nitrite-free’ bacon is made using celery juice, since celery contains heaps of it.

I find the keys to good bacon are; great pork, dry curing instead of brine injection and a good kiss of real apple smoke. I get hits from women of all ages through my bacon - maybe I should offer it to AD as a putative?

Shaun

Well poop LOL Do you use synthetic sodium nitrite ? Most commercial brands use the synthetic stuff. Its already converted from a nitrate which is harmless to a nitrosamines which cause cancer.

Natural nitrates like those found in celery and salt convert as well but there is a much lower level then in commercial bacon. I dont trust those who claim to be nitrate free either. Homemade is still the best. My grandfather used salt curing.

I read somewhere if you eat a lot of bacon or meat with nitrates like cold cuts and stuff you should be sure to take a lot of Vitamin C and E. Apparently vitamin C inhibits the conversion of sodium nitrate into those nasty nitrosamines

Tisha

Tisha,

I limit the nitrite/nitrate in my smallgoods to 100ppm - that high enough to stop botulism, but still pretty low. Vitamin C does work, but the idea is to limit the nitrosamines from forming in the meat (once consumed it won’t convert), so I add a good dose of Vitamin C to my curing mix - or, if I am making salami - directly into the sausage mix. Eating it afterwards won’t help - but as you can’t really overdose Vit C it won’t harm you

I have kids, and I can’t think of anything worse than risking their health but as I’d rather have them eat home cured smallgods than commercial crap I’m OK with using nitrites - the alternative is risking catastrophic consequences in the form of botulism - which often is dealy…

Especially with bacon, which I cold smoke for 48-72 hours before bringing it up to 60C, the risks would just be too great.

Anyway, bacon is next to godliness in this household…:slight_smile:

Bacon! Nom nom nom :smiley:

Great tip thanks :smiley:

Drink lots of OJ with it Steve. :wink:

Tish

Well I do LOVE bacon, but as has been stated here already, its really terrible for you. I only ingest it maybe once every few months if at that. Its just not conducive to my diet or health.:angry:

im not really a fried bacon fan…i only eat microwaved bacon :slight_smile: