5 things you didn't know or you might not have known or maybe forgot or that I just wanted to say about bacon.

In our house we call bacon magic because it is magic—salty, sweet, chewy, crispy, tender, silky magic.  One minute you're hungry, the next you are picking your teeth in a food buzz, lucky, smart and good looking.  Viola.

1.  You can bake bacon.  This is not news, but it bears repeating. The eggs need your attention more than the bacon, but bacon ignored can lead to flaws. Cast iron has hot spots. Frying pans make a mess. Put some foil on a rimmed baking sheet, put magic slices on the foil and bake until you reach your desired level of sorcery.

2. You can eat "raw" bacon.  You can eat eggs raw too, doesn't mean you should. Here's the logic: we get our bacon from a charcuterie, local, pastured, honest and good. Tony, the charcutier hot smokes the bellies and then slices them thick and thin making magic. Internal temp reaches 150+, way beyond the perishing point of the trichinella round worm which wasn't even present in the pastured, heritage belly anyway. Part of the magic of magic is linked to it's preparation. Render some of the fat. Brown some of the sugar present in the flesh. Make it crispy, but not too. This is proper bacon. If it is hot-smoked and artisanal you could dispense with the heat—I just love knowing it's possible—but it's better if you don't. If you have store-bought cellophane bacon you also have a bonus of nitrate slurry, liquid "smoke" and conveyor line hog belly.  You don't need to cook this either, if you follow me.

3. It's easy to make at home.  Not cook, make, produce, go from belly to bacon. If you have the right equipment, know what to do and do it right, homemade bacon is a snap. You need a smoker, a meat lug, plastic wrap, ingredients. A meat slicer is optional but super handy.  It goes like this:  get a 5lb piece of belly.  Coat it in a dry brine. Wrap it up tight in plastic wrap. Tighter. Tighter. Good. Put it in the lug, put the lug in the fridge. Put a weight on the belly: a cast iron whatever, a brick, another meat lug with floor tiles in it. Flip the belly once a day. Re-weight. After a week or so, remove the belly, rinse and let dry uncovered in the fridge for a day.  This is called making the pellicle which you will learn all about when you research what to do and how to do it right. When the belly is ready, hang it in the smoker at about 200 degrees. Drink beer, contemplate the smoke and its groovy shapes. Sic transit gloria mundi.  Drink more. Don't peek in the smoker unless you want more beer because peeking extends smoke time.  Tell some good ones, stories, jokes, lies, whatever you got. When you're at temp you got bacon.  Behold the ham of god which taketh away the sin of store-bought.

4. Bacon sausage is a real thing.  I've had it.  It's a naturally-cased, fresh sausage, made with bacon, even better than you can imagine.  A little bit Houdini, a little bit Penn and Teller.  Amalgamated magic.  See your (or my) charcutier.

5. You can deep-fry bacon.  But don't.



Couple other food-ish posts on this blog, in case you were looking:

http://pottercjp.blogspot.com/2013/10/what-we-think-about-when-we-think-about.html

http://pottercjp.blogspot.com/2013/09/take-gun-leave-cannoli.html