BACON BACON!

From the Bacon Bacon Facebook page

So, the latest American obsession is with the food truck.

Couple that with another great American obsession, and you get BACON BACON!

It's a food truck specializing in bacon!

Unfortunately, if you're not in the San Francisco area, you probably won't get to see this gem.  Unless, of course, the Bacon Bacon truck idea spreads like wildfire and they franchise out all over the country and then everyone can just walk up and... oops, getting a bit excited there.

Inside Scoop SF has a nice article about Bacon Bacon:

So what’s on the menu? Bacon, obviously. There will be six sandwiches, all made with bacon (though some can be made without): A pork belly and fried egg one, a grilled cheese number, the L.G.B.T (lettuce, goat cheese, bacon and tomato), pork meatball banh mi (featuring bacon in place of the traditional pate), broccoli rabe with bacon, and the requisite “Bacon Bacon Burger.”

On the side, there will be french fries, fried with rosemary and sage, salted and topped with parmesan; there is the option to get them “dirty” with fried pork belly trimmings. Angelus has also made a deal with San Mateo-based Devil’s Canyon to serve their root beer on tap.

Mmmmmm... sounds delicious!

Want to connect directly with Bacon Bacon and see when they'll be rolling down the hills of San Fran?  Go to their Facebook page and give them a like! I'm going to like them RIGHT NOW!

Yep.  Next time I'm in the bay area, I'll be looking for them.



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Green Bean Bacon Bundles

©How Sweet It Is

Bacon can be healthy.  Kinda.  Sorta.
Don't these just look amazing?

In my quest for new bacon recipes, I stumbled upon How Sweet It Is, a blog by the lovely Jessica about food.  Jessica loves bacon too, so it's no surprise that she posted this delicious looking recipe!

Green Bean Bacon Bundles
makes about 10-12 bundles
1 pound fresh green beans
10-12 slices of thick-cut bacon
2 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon brown sugar
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper

You'll have to go visit her site for the rest of the recipe!

While you're there, check out the other recipes in her bacon tag as well.  I'll definitely be visiting her often.



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Which Bacon?

You know, I figured I'd better pimp my go-to brand of bacon.

While I'm always looking for new and awesome types of bacon, I do have one brand that I will buy for my day-to-day needs.  That brand is Wright Brand Bacon.

I just find Wright to be a consistently good bacon. It's perfectly smoked and has a bit thicker cut without being too thick. It bakes, wraps, weaves and grills beautifully.

Yeah, it is a bit more expensive. I think my supermarket sells it for around $9 for the 24oz size. "Regular" bacon is around $5 for a pound, so it's really not that bad. And... the package is resealable!

And it's worth it. Trust your Bacon Goddess.

Anyway, there's the pimpage for my brand of choice!

Go give their wonderfully fun website a visit or like them on the Facebook, they're very interactive with their fans!


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Starry Night - in BACON!

I've been out-of-hand for a bit and sadly neglecting my bacon blogging, so I figured I'd return with something so delicious it will give you a whole new appreciation for art!

Yes, this is Van Gogh's Starry Night... recreated in bacon!


This Instructable by CopperTwist, entitled "Van Gogh for Breakfast", will run you through how to make your own Starry Night out of bacon. So artfully delicious!



You know what's cool? People have seen this and been inspired to create their own bacon art!

Chow Bella made a portrait of famous Arizona sheriff, Joe Arpaio.






Here's a tutorial on how to make your own bacon art by Alexander Ross. Complete with a creepy bacon baby!


Yep. My appreciation for art has grown a hundredfold today!





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Baconnection - The App for Bacon Lovers!

What's this?

An app for bacon lovers?

But only for Android?

Damn it!

(The Bacon Goddess enjoys iGadgets and uses a crappy old flip phone. *frowny face*)

Baconnection is available on the Android market right now and it looks like so much fun!  I will hope that they develop it for iPad sometime in the future.

So... what does it do?  I DON'T KNOW BECAUSE IT'S NOT ON ITUNES!

But the website tells us that it's recipes, trivia and a game:

We've assembled an incredible variety of recipes with bacon in them, from bacon soups to bacon salad, bacon wrapped treats to bacon wrapped meals, bacon burgers to bacon pasta, even bacon with chocolate. No matter how much you already love bacon, you'll discover new ways to cook bacon and new ways to make bacon delicious.

Bacon Bits lets you snack on bite-size trivia quizzes. You won't believe how many fun bacon facts you'll find out.

You've never enjoyed bacon like this before. Baconnection™ is a fun new riff on a familiar game, challenging you to make "Baconnections™" between the unlikeliest ingredients and bacon. Can you link from guacamole to bacon in six recipes or less? How about scotch? Mahi mahi? The higher your score, the cleverer your connections, and the faster you fly, the more likely you are to win fun badges. Can you become a Baconnoisseur?

And it's only 99 cents.

Yes, iPad version, please!


UPDATE!
Well what do you know? I posted on Baconnection's Facebook wall asking after an iTunes version and they responded nigh immediately!  Look!  Look!

As luck would have it dear Bacon Goddess, an iPhone version is on it's way and should be available the second week of May. We'll be sure to post on our fan page once we've got final approval to go live in the iTunes store! Stay tuned!

Hooray! 

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Bacon Roses!

Photo by kaptaink_cg for Instructables article

First off, thanks to EVERYONE who sent me the photo. But special thanks to Jessica for finding the instructions to make these!

Yes, the photo was making the rounds after being on failblog as a WIN, but exactly HOW do you make these beautiful bacon roses? By following the instructions by kaptaink_cg, here on Instructables!  They say:

Flowers make a nice gift to the friend that needs a smile or for that special someone in your life. Roses are even better. But sometimes even roses don't cut it. Sometimes you need something a little more non-cliché, something...extraordinary... Sometimes, you need BACON.

It actually looks pretty easy to do! I'm not sure that I will try this, but it's nice to know how - just in case.

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Sausage? Bacon? Why Choose?

Look at this. Would you just look at this beautiful thing!

It's like a heavenly union of breakfast meats!

Pork and Bacon Sausage Roll is available nation-wide - just put your zip in the store locator and it will spit out where to find it near you.

I believe that we will be having this for breakfast next weekend. With biscuits and gravy I think. Sausage bacon gravy.  Then we will have a review.

My friend Henri of the bacon-wrapped meatloaf recipe found this. I have awesome friends.

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Bacon Wrapped Meatloaf

Why yes, that IS bacon in those green beans!

One day my friend Henri posted a recipe. It was a recipe for meatloaf. I like meatloaf. I continued to read the recipe... what's this? Meatloaf wrapped in BACON?

Yep, I had to make it. It is delicious!
Henri said it was cool to share the recipe here, so here it is!

(I'll add my personal notes at the end.)

Henri's Not Yer Mom's Meatloaf

1 pound ground chuck
1 pound mild breakfast sausage (Jimmy Dean, mofos!)
Two eggs
1.5 C bread crumbs (I chose Contadina Italian Seasoned this time)
.25 C PickaPeppa Sauce* (NO SUBSTITUTIONS FOR THIS)
2 T Worcestershire sauce (mix with PickaPeppa)
Half a medium onion, chopped
Four cloves of garlic, minced
5-6 slices of bacon, cut in half

Mix all ingredients except bacon, saving approx 1-2 T of Worcestershire/PickaPeppa for a glaze

Mold into log shape

Glaze meatlog

Place bacon halves over top of log, overlapping slices and tucking the ends under to prevent curling

BAKE
at 350 for 45 mins, use rest of glaze, put back in oven for another
30-45 minutes, remove when it temps to 160 degrees in the center

*Get the sauce at: pickapeppa.com (It's awesome!)

Ready for the oven

I halved the recipe (only two people eating this) and used hot sausage (because it was all I had).  I only had plain bread crumbs, so I tossed in a bit of oregano, basil & thyme and mixed it up to get the same basic flavor.  Really, you can use any kind of breadcrumbs you want.

As you can see from the picture, I decided to do a bacon weave on the meatloaf instead of strips.  Because I think bacon weaves are the coolest thing ever!  I used Wright Brand bacon for this.

Okay, it says NO SUBSTITUTIONS for the PickaPeppa sauce and I'm totally standing by it.  This sauce is amazing and it works incredibly with the meats and the bacon to add a flavor that is nothing short of heavenly.  It just won't be the same if you don't use PickaPeppa!

Delicious!

Finished product?  Here it is!  Swimming in delicious bacon grease!
This is possibly the best meatloaf I've ever eaten.  My husband said it was so good he didn't even need ketchup.






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BaconAir - Bacon Flavored Oxygen Inhaler

The folks at J&D's Foods have done it again! Now you can literally inhale your bacon!

Following in the footsteps of the bacon baby formula, they're introducing the BaconAir, bacon flavored oxygen inhaler.

"Hungry for bacon but don’t want the calories? Try BaconAir! Competing in a sporting event or spelling bee? Try BaconAir! Vacuuming the house? Try BaconAir! Taking a test? Try BaconAir! Driving a race car or semi-truck? Try BaconAir. If you want to run faster, jump higher, look and feel more attractive or memorize long sequences of numbers – try BaconAir!


We are still waiting for our first shipment of bacon-flavored Himalayan oxygen, but for now you can put your name on the waiting list above. We have very limited quantities and a big demand already, so you should act fast."

Wait... what day is tomorrow?

Oops, looks like Time Magazine, the Gothamist and the Village Voice already fell for it!

Well played, guys. I love you.



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Bacon Candles

When you can't have bacon, you can still have the smell of bacon!

"My sister was selling candles for school and I was making fun of her because they were really girly scents and the idea came to me that there weren't any man-scented candles." 

Those are the words of Hart Main, the 13 year old entrepreneur behind Man Cans, scented candles for men.

And yes, one of his candle scents is bacon.

Hart has other scents as well:  fresh mitt (baseball glove), gear head (the auto garage), sawdust, New York style pizza and others.  And evidently business is booming:

"We just served 250 cans of soup in a soup kitchen in Lima (Ohio) to get the cans. It was supposed to last three months. It lasted three weeks."

Hart makes the candles for about two dollars and fifty cents each and sells them for five bucks.  He's sold over 500 so far through local stores and the internet.  He says that he's purchased a nice bike with his profits.  Smart kid.


You can buy your very own Man Can on the Man Can website.  Be patient, though, Hart is very busy making these in his kitchen since his story hit the national news!

I'm going to order a bacon one tonight.  I'll let you know what I think when it arrives!

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Baconfest Chicago

I found another bacon festival!
Doing this blog is really making me want to travel.

Baconfest Chicago is happening on April 9th at the UIC Forum in Chicago, and it looks like amazing food and fun:

Baconfest Chicago is a full day celebration of bacon: a Fest to end all Fests. Baconfest’s roster of bacon-inspired activities, bacon-foods, and bacon-spirits comprise the greatest single culinary and cultural festival ever dedicated to Bacon and Bacon only.

Sounds like my kind of event!  But if you're wondering what actually goes on there, they give this nice little summary:

At the Bacon Vendor Expo, over thirty artisan bacon-makers and bacontrepreneurs will display, sample, and sell their multitude of local craft bacons and bacon-related products on the floor of the Vendor Expo. Grab a Baconfest Chicago: Guide to Bacon playbill and walk around. You’ll have landed in a bacon-lover’s Nirvana.

At the Bacon Chef Expo and Bar, chefs from over forty-five of Chicago’s hottest restaurants prepare and serve small plates starring bacon. Chicago’s finest mixologists and brewers quench our throats made parched from all that delicious bacon with their refreshing bacon-based and bacon-inspired cocktails and brews. In the Chef Expo and Bacon Bar local restaurants will serve bacon-based snacks, local bakeries will concoct bacon-sweets, and local bars will serve up bacon cocktails and refreshing beer.

The highlight of the event: the Golden Rashers, the Oscars of the bacon world, presented to the winners of the Pro & Amateur Bacon Cook-offs, as well as a bevy of other prize categories.

The website is full of great information about the event.  You can read the manifesto, see the charity this year's event will sponsor and even buy a t-shirt.  you can also learn about the different chefs, mixologists and vendors that will be there, so go explore it a bit and see why I'm totally envious of those lucky ticketholders.

You can go here to get the basic FAQs, but it looks like they are completely sold out for this year!  They say that there will still be some free ticket giveaways coming up, so I'd suggest joining their mailing list if you really want to go.

If you can whip up a poem about bacon before tomorrow, you might win some tickets:

That’s right, for the next 10 days, we’ll be accepting submissions for the BEST POEM ABOUT BACON.

What does this mean exactly?  What ever you want it to mean.  We want to read some poems about bacon, why you love it, why you just can’t get enough, why it haunts your dreams… you get the idea.

Go here for more info!


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Bacon Cheesecake!

I posted something on a social networking site about enjoying a bacon cheesesteak and one of my friends commented: "For a second I saw 'bacon cheesecake'", which gave me an idea.

After some searching I found out that yes, it HAS been done. I just wasn't that pleased with the recipes I saw. I want a simple cheesecake with the addition of bacon. So I made up my own recipe.

This is for you, Scott.

BACON CHEESECAKE

• 10-12 strips of bacon (go for thick-ish and meaty, fatty bacon is not very good for this)

CRUST

• 2c graham cracker crumbs
• 2 Tbsp brown sugar
• 6 Tbsp butter (OR a mix of butter and bacon grease if you want it REALLY good!)

FILLING

• 24 oz cream cheese (3 - 8oz packages) at room temperature
• 3 eggs
• 3/4 c white sugar
• 2 tsp vanilla extract

Bacon Prep:
Bake 6-8 bacon strips crispy enough to crumble well. Make sure the fat is all crisp - chewy bits in a cheesecake are kind of gross. (See my Baking Bacon post for directions if you need to know how to do this.)

Dredge 4 additional strips of bacon through some brown sugar and bake some candied bacon as well.

Turn the oven down to 350 and set the bacon aside to cool. SAVE THAT GREASE! Make the crust while it cools, then crumble 2 strips of the plain bacon very finely (I used a food processor) and 4 strips finely and keep separate. Eat the extras, if you haven't already. Crumble the candied bacon coarsely and keep separate.

Crust Prep:
Grease a 9 inch springform pan, making sure to get a bit up the sides.  (Some people suggest putting parchment paper on the bottom of the pan, but I've never tried that.)

Blend your graham cracker crumbs and sugar well.

Soften your butter until it's almost melted (and/or bacon grease) and slowly pour into your dry mix, stirring to blend. Add the 2 strip pile of very finely crumbled bacon and pull out any chunks that are too chunky.

When it is completely mixed and sticks together well, start pressing the mixture into the bottom of your pan and up the sides a bit. You can get it smooth and even using the bottom of a drinking glass or similar.

Bake at 350 for 8 - 10 minutes, but keep an eye on it - you don't want to burn it or bake it too much or the crust will be hard and gross. You're shooting for nice and browned.

Take it out and let it cool completely, then grease the sides of the pan well above the crust.

Filling prep:
Beat the softened cream cheese until it is creamy.

Add the sugar and vanilla and beat creamy.

Add the 4 strip pile of bacon and beat creamy.

Now comes the tricky part. Add the eggs one at a time, slowly, and just beat well enough to blend - do NOT beat the hell out of it once you add the eggs or it will force too much air into the batter and it will fall when you take it out of the oven. Scrape the sides as you blend to make sure you've gotten those eggs mixed in really well.

Baking:
Pour your batter into the greased pan on top of the baked/cooled crust and put it in the oven for 35 minutes. Place a pie dish filled about 2/3 full of water on the bottom rack while you bake your cheesecake. This helps keep the oven steamy and your cheesecake creamy! You can also do a water bath if you're familiar with it, but they scare me so I don't do those.

When the timer goes off take out your cheesecake and run a very thin bladed knife carefully around the inside of the pan so it can pull away from the pan properly. Put it back in the oven, turn off the oven and crack the door. Let your cheesecake stay in the oven as it cools to finish the baking and prevent cracking. About 40 minutes is usually good.

Take it out and sprinkle the candied bacon crumbled evenly across the top. You can remove the springform sides now, or let it chill in the fridge overnight before removing the pan. Regardless, let it chill at least three hours before you eat it.


NOTE: Cheesecake is evidently pretty tricky. This is something you'll have to experiment with and learn what works best for you.  Everyone has their own way of doing cheesecake.

I beat the hell out of my batter the first time after I added the eggs and my poor bacon cheesecake fell when I took it out of the oven. It was still creamy and delicious, though.

I mean, we all strive for the perfect cheesecake, but are you really NOT going to eat one that's not absolutely perfect?












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Oh Google, what have you done? Recipe search?

Guess what?
The Google added a recipe search!

So... now when you're in the mood for a nice bacon recipe you can just go to the Google and type in "bacon".

Yeah, okay, so I'd rather have you go to my bacon recipes page, since I'll be pre-sorting all the REALLY good bacon recipes out for you there, but I think this is going to be a great tool for those of us who love to cook!

Now I just need to read up on how to get the Google to list my stuff!




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Makin’ Bacon at Home Day!

Remember when I blogged about the 4th Annual Blue Ribbon Bacon Festival coming up in Des Moines, Iowa? Did you know that there's actually something called the "Iowa Bacon Board"?

In celebration of the Blue Ribbon Bacon Festival coming up this weekend, they've announced a week of ways to get ready for the big event!

Today is MAKIN' BACON AT HOME DAY! Yep, everyone should cook a little bacon at home today, even if you can't make it to the festival.  (The tickets sold out within hours this year, btw.)

Everyone can participate in the fun. Go to your local grocer and buy a pound of your favorite bacon. Fry it, bake it or grill it…just please don’t nuke it. Feel free to share your bacon experience on the Blue Ribbon Bacon Festival Facebook wall.

Oh, and tomorrow is the Bacon Queen contest if you happen to be a bacon babe living in Des Moines!  Prize is two tickets!

The Bacon Goddess loves the guys at the Blue Ribbon Bacon Festival.  TOTALLY planning on going next year!



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Vosges Bacon Chocolate

I have something better than the bacon roundup today!

One of the best things about being a bacon blogger is when your readers send you products to review.  Oh okay, so it was my sister, but I swear she reads my blog!

So I get the mail this week and what to my wondering eyes should appear but TWO bars of BACON CHOCOLATE!  Not only that, but it's gourmet bacon chocolate!

It's made by Vosges, a gourmet chocolate company, and it comes in two types:  a deep (41% cacao) milk chocolate and a dark (62% cacao) chocolate.  Called Mo's Bacon Bar, both of these large 3 oz. chocolate bars feature bacon!  Of course I had to rip them open and start nomming.

The description of the product tells you that it is applewood smoked bacon + Alder wood smoked salt + chocolate.  The chocolate bars are divided into 8 squares (serving size: 4 squares) with the logo and a delightful little picture of a girl with a shopping bag imprinted on them.  They both smell like chocolate, no bacon smell that I could pick up.

I broke the bars and saw the bacon!  It wasn't very big chunks, but definitely noticeable.

The hardest part was deciding which to try first.  I settled on the deep milk chocolate because dark chocolate is my favorite and I wanted to save that for last.

Okay, so the deep milk chocolate is delicious.  This is some beautiful creamy smooth chocolate right here. The bacon is interesting and adds a little smoky crunch and salt with just a hint of pork, but overall I'm more impressed with how delicious this chocolate is itself.

The dark chocolate, on the other hand, is the PEFECT medium for highlighting the bacon.  The semi-sweet of the 62% cacao mingled with the salty smoky bacon crunch is simply divine.  I might be a bit biased, though, because I sure do love me some dark chocolate!

I'd definitely say that Vosges came up with the perfect ratio of bacon/chocolate for these.  It's definitely bacon chocolate, but not so bacon-y that you lose the beautifully crafted chocolate.

The inspiration for these really tickled me:

"I began experimenting with bacon + chocolate at the tender age of 6, while eating chocolate chip pancakes drenched in Aunt Jemima® syrup, as children often do. Beside my chocolate-laden cakes laid three strips of sizzlin' bacon, just barely touching a sweet pool of maple syrup. And then, the magic—just a bite of the bacon was too salty and I yearned for the sweet kiss of chocolate and syrup, so I combined the two. In retrospect, perhaps this was a turning point; for on that plate something magical happened, the beginnings of a combination so ethereal and delicious that it would haunt my thoughts until I found the medium to express it—chocolate."

 You can buy these online at vosgeschocolate.com along with some other really really cool looking bacon & chocolate products!

For example:

Bacon and Eggs
Redefining bacon and eggs. Five dark chocolate half eggs arrive nestled in straw and are each filled with soft buttery bacon caramel. Bite, crack, ooze, salty-sweet delight. Five 1 ounce bacon caramel filled half eggs, presented in a purple gift box.

It's a chocolate egg with chickens on it!

They also have a flying bacon chocolate pig and Mo's Bacon Chocolate Chip Pancake Mix!   <3



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Random Bacon Roundup

I've decided that Sunday will be Random Bacon Roundup day!
Here are this week's choices of weird and/or awesome bacon stuff from around those internets we all love so dearly.

The top story in bacon this week was
BACON TOOTHPASTE!
It's like having breakfast AFTER breakfast!
Luckily Archie McPhee is more than happy to provide a product description for us:

"It's the perfect way to keep your teeth and gums healthy while coating your mouth with the delicious flavor of smoky meat!"

And it's a steal at $4.50!

 

BACON CUFFLINKS by elementAg on Etsy!

"Inspired by my 'foodie' brothers these copper strips of bacon are hand etched and inlaid with sterling silver to create 'fat veins'."

Are they $225 awesome?  You'll have judge that for yourself.

If you're not a cufflink wearing type, maybe you'd like some earrings instead?
BACON EARRINGS by Birdcage Creative on Folksy
These resin drop earrings are going to be hard to pass up!  They'll cost you about $14.50 shipped to the U.S.

Are you following THE BACON SHOW?
If not, you should!  They have one bacon recipe per day, forever.

WHAT?  No, really...what?
I guess if bacon makes everything better...

POCKET BACON!  An iPhone app!
You can fry virtual bacon, get bacon news and even find restauarants that serve bacon near you.






And I will leave you with:
Bacon Beer
I don't know what they're saying, but it certainly looks exciting!


This actually gave me an idea.  I have a friend who is a uber beer aficionado and I seem to recall him posting something about a beer that had a bacon flavor to it.  Hmmmm.  Might be time for a guest blogger.


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Baking Bacon

No, this isn't a new weird recipe, it's cooking tips!

Growing up, I learned how to cook bacon.  You get your skillet or griddle and lay out your bacon strips, turn the heat up to medium high and either use a bacon press or sit there with your spatula pushing the edges down so it doesn't curl up.  Flip it occasionally until it's nice and crispy after being fried in its own grease.  Make sure you wear pants.

Pretty simple, huh?

Well, in all my years I had never even thought of BAKING bacon!  Evidently this is kind of a big thing now in the world of cooking and it supposedly yields some great results... so I had to try it. I read up on the procees and experimented a little bit, then came up with the following way to get yourself some easy yummy baked bacon in the oven with no flipping.  You don't even have to wear pants.

Okay, first off you are going to line a cookie/jelly roll/baking sheet that has sides of some sort with foil, but in a special way.  What you're going to do is pinch  ridges in the foil before you lay it on the pan.  Just little ridges - not mountains.  You want to lift the bacon just a bit out of the main grease accumulation, but not leave it high and dry.  This also helps to give the baked bacon a little wave - for aesthetic purposes. Don't want to go through all that trouble?  Put a baking rack on top of the foil and put the bacon on that.

Lay your bacon down on the foil (or rack), making sure to not let the strips touch. If they touch, they will stick together and not get crispy. The bacon will shrink as it bakes, so leaving a lot of space is not necessary, just don't let them touch.  Use a big enough baking sheet and you can fit a whole pound of bacon on it.

There are two schools of baking bacon: preheated and cold. I've tried both and I prefer the cold/cool oven method.  It seems as if it just gets the bacon a bit crispier.

Get your sheet ready, turn on the oven, lay out the bacon and then just pop it in the oven while it's still heating up. I've also heard a lot of different oven temperatures for baking bacon, but I find that setting the oven at 400 gives the best results. About 15-20 minutes gives me good crispy bacon using this method, depending on the thickness of the bacon. You'll need to keep an eye on it your first few times to see how long you need to cook it to get your perfect bacon every oven is different and everyone's idea of "pefect bacon" varies.

When your bacon is done, remove it from the oven carefully.  While baking bacon is a no-splatter method, be really careful of the collected grease.  If you tilt the pan too much the grease might ride up the side of the pan and pop or splatter a bit.  Also, the bacon is still cooking in its internal grease as you remove it from the oven so it is still very very hot.  Carefully remove it from the rack and set it on a plate lined with paper towels to cool for a few minutes.

NOTE: One of the absolute best things about baking bacon is that you can add things to it before you cook it without having them get washed away in the grease from a skillet.  Grind some black pepper onto it before you bake it or roll it around in a bowl of brown sugar first for an interesting flavor change!  My favorite so far?  Grind some rosemary into almost a powder in a food grinder/mortar & pestle and dredge the bacon in it before putting on the baking sheet. Delicious!

Okay, you're NOT going to let that bacon grease go to waste, are you?  Give it just a minute to cool so it doesn't splatter and then drain that goodness right into your grease crock.  WHAT?  You don't have a crock for saving your bacon grease?  What do you cook your eggs in or spread on your toast or pop your popcorn in?  Here is my bacon grease crock.  You can buy it on Amazon for under 20 bucks.


Oh! You can also bake a bacon weave to put on top of something else if you don't want to wrap your food in bacon before cooking. Maybe a casserole?  A nice baked macaroni & cheese? A pizza? Hmmmm... now I want to experiment!


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Random Bacon Roundup

Occasionally I find cool bacon news/stuff and don't want to do a full review or article on it, so I've decided to do a weekly (?) roundup of the weird and/or wonderful things I find on these internets relating to bacon.

I LOVE YOU, JAPAN!
Pepper. Bacon. Doritos. Twists.
You can buy "Japanese Snack Treat" right here.



Bacon habenero infused vodka.
Brandon Matzek at kitchenkonfidence.com will teach you to make this!

I saw this awesome photo of bacon nail polish and tracked it down to The Daily Nail. This was actually Day 28 in her 365 days of nail art project a few years back.  So cool.  I would totally lick them all day, though.

Beer and Bacon Mancakes.
Yes, they called them "mancakes".  It's a Betty Crocker recipe!  Getting a bit daring in your old age there, aren't you, Betty?  The link takes you to the video - the recipe link is below that.


Yes, I was saving the best for last...

HAM SOLO IN CANDYBARONITE!
This is the most awesome thing ever.  And Booturtle is the most awesome wife ever for making this for her husband!  I think I have a girl crush on her... even if she IS a vegetarian.






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Potato Bacon Corn Chowder - in a Crock Pot

I made this today, based roughly on a recipe I saw online, but kind of took off and did my own thing according to what I thought would be tasty - including the addition of bacon. It came out delicious!

You can use my recipe as a starting point and do the same thing, or follow it exactly if you want what I had. This should make you a pretty big pot of soup, I still have half a crock pot left after my husband and I each had a pretty huge bowl. I'm going to say this makes 6-8 servings, but it could be more or less depending on how big you like your bowls of soup.

This is an all-day crock pot recipe.  It will take 6-8 hours to cook this way.  You might be able to do it quicker on the stove in a stock pot if you want to try it that way.

POTATO BACON CORN CHOWDER

• 4-5 red potatoes - peeled and cut into bite sized pieces
• 1/2 large onion - diced
• 1 clove garlic - diced
• Carrots - diced fine (Use as much as you'd like. I used three baby carrots, for very subtle flavor and a hint of color)
• Celery - diced fine (Same as carrots - I used a half stalk)
• 1/4 - 1/2 cup crispy bacon crumbles depending on how bacon-y you want it (plus extra for garnish if you desire)
• 1 cup sweet corn (canned or frozen is fine - use more or less to suit your tastes)
• 2 cans chicken broth
• 1 Tbsp chicken bullion
• A splash or two of worcestershire sauce
• Butter (To cook the onions and a Tbsp to put in the soup)
• Parsley flakes
• White pepper
• 1 Tbsp brown sugar
• 1 can evaporated milk
• Shredded cheese and sour cream to garnish (I used a jack/cheddar mix)

Cook your bacon crispy and crumble it up.
Cook your onions and garlic either in butter or bacon grease until they are soft and just a bit browned.
Pour the cans of broth into your crock pot and stir in the bullion, then add everything EXCEPT the evaporated milk and cheese/sour cream garnish. Just keep those in the fridge for now.
Give it all an eyeball. The liquid should just cover the potatoes. If it doesn't, add a bit of water. Stir well and turn the crock pot on.
Cook that on low for about 6 hours or high for about 4 hours.  Give it a stir and check the done-ness of the potatoes occasionally.

Okay, here's where we get all tricky. When the potatoes are cooked tender, you are going to remove some of them, mash them in a bowl and put them back in the soup.  This will give it the right consistency to be chowderlike.

How thick do you like your chowder?  If you like it VERY thick, you're gonna mash up a LOT o'them 'taters. I mashed about half of them, which got me a chowder of medium thickness that still had some delicious potato chunks in it. You could probably puree half of it in a blender with some heavy cream if you wanted a cream-like soup. After you mash and put the potatoes back in, stir in the can of evaporated milk and let it cook another hour or two.

Stir occasionally and taste it too, to see if it "needs" anything.  I ended up adding a bit more white pepper to my soup towards the end.

When it's ready, ladle it into a bowl and sprinkle some cheese and bacon on the top.  Add a dollop of sour cream and eat up!


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Bacon Recipes for Game Day

I hear there's some big sportsball game on Sunday? Well, I don't really get into the whole sportsball thing... but I do get into cooking up good eats for my friends that do enjoy that sort of thing!

So, of course, I will post my favorite bacon recipes for game day nomming right here for everyone.

Today I will feature three delectable dishes. We'll have your appetizer, your entree and your dessert. The appetizer is a yummy bacon vegetable dip that goes great with chips OR vegetables. The main course is what I like to call hogs in a blanket. You know what pigs in a blanket are? Like that, but bigger and with bacon. For dessert we'll be having maple french toast and bacon cupcakes. This is not MY recipe, I got it from foodnetwork.com, but it sounds delicious and I'm going to try it soon.

Let's get started.

 
BACON VEGETABLE DIP

• 1 16oz sour cream
• 1 envelope Knorr vegetable soup mix (Do not substitute this! Knorr is the BEST for dips.)
• 4 strips of crispy cooked bacon - crumbled
• Veggies or chips to serve with the dip

This is very easy to make but oh so tasty!

1. Get a plastic or glass bowl with a lid that will hold 16oz of sour cream
2. Scoop in 1/2 of the sour cream
3. Dump in the package of soup mix
4. Add about a tablespoon of water to facilitate easier stirring
5. Stir it up, making sure you get all the sour cream from the bottom
6. Once it's blended a bit, add the rest of the sour cream and stir well
7. Okay, time for the bacon! Stir in those crumbles. Make sure the bacon is cooked so all the fat is crispy - if you put non-crispy bacon in this it will turn rubbery and icky as the dip sets. The bacon should also be crumbled very finely so the delicious bacon flavor can spread evenly throughout the dip.
8. Stir and stir and stir and stir until it's all blended as evenly as possible
9. Now you need to be patient and let it sit. Making this the night before you want to eat it is the best, but as long as you give it about three hours for the vegetables to rehydrate, you should be okay. Longer is better.
10. Give it another good stir before serving and jump on in with your chips and veggies!

After you've warmed up your eating muscles with the dip, you'll need to eat something more substantial. Hogs in a blanket are a good choice! This recipe makes 8 of these bad boys, but you can double/triple the recipe to make more if you need it.

HOGS IN A BLANKET

• 1 package (8) hot dogs
• 2 tubes (8 count) crescent roll dough
• 8 slices of bacon
• 8 hot dog length/width slices of cheese

1. Slice your hot dogs lengthwise about 3/4 the way through, so they open like a book
2. Shove in one slice of cheese and one slice of bacon and close it up as well as you can.
3. Unroll your crescent dough and break off the pieces in groups of two
4. Pinch the seams of the two doughs together to make one big dough.
5. Carefully roll the hot dog in the dough, pulling gently where necessary to make it fit. You want to kind of squeeze the hot dog tight while you roll it up to make sure the bacon and cheese stay in there. Depending on the size of your hot dog/dough you can enclose the whole dog in the dough or leave the little hot dog ends peeking out. If you enclose it, you will have less juice & cheese leakage, but it looks cuter with the ends showing.
6. Carefully pinch the dough to seal it on to the hot dog.
7. Place your wrapped up hot dogs on a foil lined cookie sheet and cook according to the directions on the crescent roll package.

They will be HOT when they come out of the oven, so be careful biting into them!

NOTES: 
I've made these with the bratwurst that comes in the same size as hot dogs and smoked gouda and they were delicious!
The harder the cheese you use, the less it will drip. For example, that smoked gouda barely dripped at all, but american cheese leaked a bit more.

Photograph by Kate Sears

for Food Network

So you've started in on the serious eating now, right?  Well, after the delicious hogs in a blanket, you will totally need a cupcake. Totally.

Here is the recipe featured at foodnetwork.com to finish off your bacon bowl feast!

MAPLE FRENCH TOAST AND BACON CUPCAKES
(Recipe Courtesy Kara Scow for Food Network Magazine)

Ingredients
For the Cupcakes:
* 1 cup all-purpose flour
* 1 cup cake flour
* 1 3.9-ounce box instant vanilla pudding mix
* 1 teaspoon baking powder
* 1 tablespoon potato starch
* 1 teaspoon cinnamon
* 1 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
* 1/2 teaspoon salt
* 1 stick unsalted butter, at room temperature
* 1/4 cup packed light brown sugar
* 1/4 cup granulated sugar
* 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
* 4 large egg whites, at room temperature
* 1/4 cup maple syrup
* 1/2 cup half-and-half, at room temperature
* 1/2 cup chopped cooked bacon (5 strips)

For the Frosting:
* 1 8-ounce package cream cheese, at room temperature
* 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature
* 2 cups sifted confectioners' sugar
* 1/4 cup maple syrup
* 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
* 3 strips bacon, cooked and chopped (optional)


Directions
Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Place paper liners in a 12-cup muffin tin. Prepare the cupcakes: Combine the flours, pudding mix, baking powder, potato starch, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt in a bowl with a whisk.

In a separate bowl, cream the butter and sugars with a mixer on low speed until combined, 6 to 8 minutes. Gradually mix in the vanilla and egg whites. Scrape down the sides of the bowl; continue mixing until light and fluffy. Add the flour mixture in 3 batches, alternating with the maple syrup and half-and-half, mixing after each addition and ending with flour. Mix until the ingredients are just combined; do not overmix. Fold in the bacon.

Pour the batter into the prepared muffin tin, filling each cup about three-quarters of the way. Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 40 minutes. Cool completely.

Meanwhile, prepare the frosting: Beat the cream cheese and butter with a mixer on medium speed until creamy. Add the confectioners' sugar, maple syrup and cinnamon; beat until combined. Spread on the cooled cupcakes; top with chopped bacon, if desired.

SOURCE

Well, there you have it - a nice selection of recipes for your big sportsball game.
Go team whoever you root for!

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Bacon Baby Formula. Wait. What?

Bacon Baby?  April Fool's!

I love you J&D. Really, I do. I mean, you're the guys who brought us Bacon Salt and Baconnaise!  But I think you might be pushing it a bit this time. Bacon Baby formula?  Really?

Okay, no it's not real - but it sure is funny!

This is pretty old, but in case you missed it, I'm going to post about it. You know, just to tide you over while I gather my recipes for some big sportsball game going on this weekend.

J&D cooked up a wallop of a April Fool's Day prank in 2010 with their Bacon Baby baby formula. They had a good number of folks going for awhile as well.

The Huffington Post bought it:

"What's especially scary is that this could easily become the norm. In fifty years, the leaders of our country may never have lived in a world where babies were not greeted with bacon the moment they emerged from the womb."

 A blogger named Pat Dollard believed everything he read on April Fool's Day:

"J&D cites in their announcement post on baconsaltblog.com that this isn’t a hoax or even just another bacon-flavored product, it’s a formula to improve your baby’s quality of life, can help them excel at a young age and they say they have legitimate research to back up with."

Several news sites and mommy blogs also picked up the story, but most of the articles ended up being taken down after people realized what day it was. 

I mean, come on guys - did you not READ the description?  Of course J&D had to test their formula.  The results were amazing:

"So we consulted with pediatricians and began to experiment with drying and grinding bacon into a fine powder, then applying a patent-pending process to concentrate this powder into the most essential nutrients and ingredients for brain development. This potential infant superfood was then added to a test subject’s infant formula. 

The results were absolutely impressive.  By the age of 4 months, our test subject started to exhibit some amazing abilities including walking and talking. By 6 months of age, she could read and memorize her early stage children's books and showed an extreme level of coordination and balance – so much so that she was enrolled in gymnastics and ballet with children 5 years older than she was! At two years old, she read her first 300 page book, memorized the Declaration of Independence and (this is absolutely true) began composing her first symphony."

Definitely one of the most fabulous pranks ever. Love it!

The best thing?  The product is still up on their store!


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Bacon Hot Sauce Review

If you recall, I ordered some Bacon Hot Sauce. Well, it arrived last week and I set to work trying it out.

Upon opening and smelling the bottle, my first impression was that it smelled bacon-y, but not quite entirely like bacon.  It was an odd smell, but not unpleasant.  Kind of like if you combined traditional cayenne hot sauce with some liquid smoke. Fingertip taste revealed that it is crazy salty and with a nice heat that creeps up on you.  Still not really impressed with the bacon flavor, but it is definitely smoky.

I decided to try it on my dinner, since I like hot sauce on my broccoli.  Yeah, I know, it's weird.  I usually use sriracha, but opted for the Bacon Hot Sauce instead.

Okay.  DO NOT TRY THIS.  You know when you were a kid and you'd go to the petting zoo/farm?  You know what the goat enclosure smelled like?  Imagine eating broccoli that tasted like that smell.  Ugh.  Not good.  So we can say that Bacon Hot Sauce is NOT good on broccoli.

Next try was on scrambled eggs.  Not too bad - but once again it tasted like liquid smoke mixed with regular cayenne hot sauce.  The heat is a nice creeping heat so you really get the flavor, I just wish the flavor was more like bacon.

I mixed some in the barbeque sauce that my husband put on his hot wings that night.  He said they were good.  No comment on them being especially hot or bacon-y, though.

I drizzled a bit on some french fries.  The bacon flavor seemed to come out a bit more when combined with potatoes. I gave up on experimenting after that and just decided that Bacon Hot Sauce is good on potatoes.

Final verdict?  It's interesting and a tasty hot sauce, but don't expect OMG BACON out of it.  If shipping were cheaper or you can find it locally for six bucks, I'd say go for it for the novelty factor.

Just do NOT put it on broccoli.


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Bacon: The Gateway to Meat for Vegetarians

What's that smell?  Oh, it's bacon cooking!  Everyone knows that smell.

Well, it seems that even vegetarians know that smell and it can be tempting to them.  Very tempting.

NPR published an article on Friday about vegetarians and bacon, and it's a great read about the psychological effects the smell of bacon has on people.

The article's mission statement:

"It seems that bacon has a way of awakening carnivorous desires within even some of the preachiest of vegetarians. And we set out to find out why."

It seems the "why" lies in the evolution of primal man to find high fat/calories especially desirable.  The smell of bacon cooking conveys its fatty goodness in a way that our bodies have a primal identification with.

Johan Lundstrom, the scientist from Monell Chemical Senses Center quoted in the article, also believes that the association of memory/emotion with smell plays a big part in bacon's attractiveness.  If you had a good childhood with family breakfasts featuring bacon, you'll relive those memories when smell bacon cooking.

I can totally see how bacon would tempt even the hardest of vegetarians back to the meaty dark side.  If this wasn't true, why would they have to make fake bacon?

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Making Your Own Bacon

Illustration by Joe McKendry for Men's Journal

Want to make your own bacon? YES!

Well, lucky for all of us, Men's Journal has an online tutorial with explicit directions to learn ya how to do just that! It also has lovely illustrations by an artist named Joe McKendry.

After reading it through, I totally think I can do this! In fact, if I can figure out how to smoke in my little gas grill, I might try it soon.

All you need is:

1 lb kosher salt • 2 oz pink salt • 8 oz brown sugar • 12 oz cracked black pepper • 3 oz cracked juniper • 20 bay leaves, crushed • 1.2 oz nutmeg • One 3–5 lb slab pork belly, skin on • 1 bunch fresh thyme • 10 cloves garlic, smashed, peeled

Except for the pink salt and pork belly, I have all of that in my pantry right now. Click the link above for the rest of the directions, but it really does seem pretty simple.

It WILL take about a week to cure the bacon, though, so be aware that this is not just a weekend cooking experiment. You could conceivably start curing one weekend and smoke/eat your bacon the next, though.

Hmmmm... I can already see ways that I could experiment with different bacon flavors based on this recipe.  I suppose a Bacon Goddess should know how to make her own bacon, huh?

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Bacon Taste Test

Chef Christopher Tanner, from the article at timesunion.com

(©John Carl D'Annibale / Times Union)

Today the Albany Times Union's website published a great article about a bacon taste test done by a culinary instructor at a local community college and it was a great read.

Chef Christopher Tanner cooked and ate five different brands of thick cut bacon and rated them.  I'm assuming these are all bacon brands you can buy at the Walmart, because one of the brands was the Walmart brand.  Surprisingly, it did not come in last!

The brands tested were Hormel Black Label, Oscar Mayer, Plumrose, Wright and Great Value (Walmart).

Tanner talks about the perfect ratio of meat to fat in the article and offers cooking tips. And, of course, he judges the bacon.  This is my favorite quote from the article about the loser of  the bacon challenge:

More fat than meat, the feeble, jaundiced strips offered a flavor reminiscent of pork rinds. They crumbled in the mouth like them, too.

Which one was it? I'm not going to give it away, you have to go read the article. It's pretty fun and informative!

Of course I have to take this chance to pimp my favorite bacon site, Bacon Freak.  Because why would you buy Walmart bacon when you can have gourmet bacon delivered to your door?

Yeah, I know, Walmart is cheaper. But do yourself a favor and indulge occasionally in some really good bacon from your local butcher or an online vendor like Bacon Freak! Your taste buds will thank you.


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The End of the Bacon Craze? Not When You Have Bacon Ice Cream!

Stephen Lewis for The Wall Street Journal;

Food styling by Victoria Granof

This is the photo featured in the WSJ article. 

Yeah, like THAT helps with their point. YUM!

Say it ain't so!  I just started this blog!

But evidently The Wall Street Journal says the bacon craze is passing.  In an article entitled The Bacon Backlash, they claim:

"We are in the midst of a bacon bubble—and a growing number of chefs (some of whom quietly admit they helped inflate the bubble to begin with) say it's about to pop."

But the article was written in October of last year and I haven't seen a bacon slowdown yet!

The article continues with a quote from Ken Oringer, chef and owner of Clio and five other Boston restaurants:

"'It's been overplayed so much and my taste buds are tired of it,' says Mr. Oringer, who now swaps it for less shopworn ingredients. If he's looking for smoke with little fat, he'll toss a smoked turkey wing into the pot. Trout wrapped in bacon is a gastronomic trope, but trout's delicate flavor is easily masked, Mr. Oringer says.

I don't understand how one's taste buds can get tired of bacon.  I mean, really, can someone explain this to me?  I suppose if you were to sit down and eat a a whole pound of bacon by itself, no matter how delicious it was, you might get tired of the taste?

It's actually a great read and makes valid points.  I suppose just because you CAN have bacon on everything doesn't mean you HAVE to.  Personally I like cooking one really good dish featuring bacon and having the rest of the meal's flavors accent the bacon dish.  (Well except for this past year's Thanksgiving, which featured a LOT of bacon.)

Of course, just as I finished reading that article, I found another talking about the BACON ICE CREAM SANDWICH available at a sandwich shop called Meat & Bread in Toronto, Ontario.  And this article was published today.  So there!

"Occasionally, customers do balk at the combination of bacon and maple ice cream, he says. 'But then they seem to enjoy it when they start eating it.'"

Great article about trends in combining sweet and savory in one food.

Yes, in my expert opinion, the bacon craze is still going strong.  But you know what?  Even if someone turns down the heat and the sizzle stops, bacon is still good cold.


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