Bacon Nation: 125 Irresistible Recipes

Photography by Lucy Schaeffer

Workman Publishing
New York

For Honeybunch

—Peter

For my bacon-loving sons, Nick and Will Reiter

—Marie

Acknowledgments

Thanks and appreciation go to:

Our editor Suzanne Rafer
for believing in us and making our book better and more bacony.

Our agent, Mark Reiter,
for the original bacon bracket that started it all and (since he’s married to one of us) for taste-testing each recipe and always saying, “Yes, bacon!”

Our graphic team:
Sarah Smith for a beautiful design, and Lucy Schaeffer, Jamie Kimm, and Sara Abalan for photographs that make us all hungry.

At Workman:
Lisa Hollander, Anne Kerman, Melissa Lucier, Kate Karol, Selina Meere, Jessica Wiener, Bob Miller, Walter Weintz, Page Edmunds, and David Schiller. And to Peter Workman for supporting this book from the very beginning.

For technical and worldly wisdom:
Nicholas Rama, Bill Schreiber, Pamela Johnson, Allan Benton, Sam Edwards III, Rick Lowry, Tanya L. Nueske, Ronny and Beth Drennan, Andrew Thielen, and the Sloan sisters of Swiss Meats and Sausage Company.

Special shout-outs to:
Molly Kay Frandson for helping on the “
therewillbebacon.com
” blog; Workman’s own Susan Bolotin for rolling up her sleeves to try out the Butternut Squash and Bacon Galette, and Chef Robert Wiedmaier for walking us carefully through his bacon-laced Coq Au Vin.

Contents

Introduction

Pig + Salt + Smoke = Bacon

Starters, Appetizers & Swizzlers

Soups: Bacon in a Bowl

Salads: Bacon and Crunch

Meatier Meats

Brawnier Birds

Smokier Seafood

Pasta and Bacon

Veggies and Sides

Muffins, Breads & Stuffings

Breakfast Means Bacon

Sweet ‘N Savory

Conversion Tables

Appendix

About the Authors

Introduction:

Blessed by Bacon

This is a book by bacon lovers for bacon lovers. When it comes to bacon, there are just two kinds of people in the world: those who adore bacon and those who have never eaten it. We definitely belong to the first group of people. And as for all those people who haven’t tried bacon, say, vegetarians or folks who don’t eat pork for religious reasons, while they may not eat bacon, that’s not to say that they wouldn’t love it if they did. They would.

To our way of thinking, bacon is the equal of pricey Périgord truffles, sybaritic Spanish saffron, and conspicuously consumed Caspian caviar. And, with bacon, just as we do before adding these more luxurious groceries to a recipe, we ask ourselves, “How much does it take to add just the right amount of flavor and texture?” As resourceful chefs have long known, a little bacon can turn a dish from blah to beautiful. Crumbled into a green salad, wrapped around a succulent shrimp, thrown into a pot of bubbling beans, or laid over a breast of spring chicken while it roasts in the oven, bacon takes good food and makes it fun.

There’s a good and a bad side to the ability of bacon to improve food. You want to taste the bacon but you also want to know what else is in the dish so that the bacon subtly enhances rather than taking over. Bacon is not just smoky flavor or crispy texture. It is a complex ingredient. Great bacon starts with porky meatiness, an example of the supersavory flavor known as
umami
(from the Japanese word for “yummy”) that we find so satiating. Its saltiness—just like table salt—pushes forward the other flavors in a recipe. Curing, aging, and cooking bacon brings out hundreds of delicious flavor compounds.

And then there is crunchiness. For the last half million years or so—ever since the discovery of fire, when we started preparing meat by cooking it and creating a perfectly charred crust—humans have craved crunchiness. There is nothing more cracklingly crunchy than a perfectly cooked piece of bacon. It satisfies.

As you know from food television, there are loads of places where people wolf down mega-calorie recipes made with unremarkable ingredients smothered with gobs of gloppy cheese and mucho bacon. It almost doesn’t matter if your favorite double-wide TV host orders a cheeseburger, pizza, club sandwich, chef’s salad, or a three-thousand-calorie bowl of
poutine;
it all tastes pretty much the same. Bacon and cheese overload isn’t fair to your ingredients or your waistline and it’s a downright diss to the full-flavored majesty of great bacon and superb cheese. You won’t find any of those overkill recipes in this book.

Part of the current bacon craze is due, no doubt, to a social phenomenon that you might call “Good Nutrition Fatigue.” There are so many experts giving us so many warnings about what’s wrong with our diet that it makes you want to say “Get off my back” and curl up with a plate of Texas Wieners, followed by a pint of OREO chip ice cream, and a quart of Jim Beam.

Bacon obsession has become a way to proclaim our independence from the food police who would have us eat a diet mostly made with boiled lentils and mashed yeast. No doubt this explains the availability of such products as bacon-scented air fresheners, bacon jelly beans, bacon strip adhesive bandages; or how about the puzzlingly named Tactical Bacon. It’s a “weapons grade” can of bacon designed for video game addicts. It’s online sales testimonial offers this bit of strangeness: “
The zombies have fought long and hard, but the tide is seeming to finally turn. . . . we have been surviving on bacon. That is why we are strong; that is why we’ll win.”

Kind of wacko? Yes. But what such products reveal is that we have a real pro-bacon movement happening in this country. We’re all for it. But we are also for respecting bacon as a delicious invention that can elevate instead of dominate other foods. Rather than treating bacon as an ingredient of last resort to rescue an uninteresting recipe or run-of-the-mill ingredients, this book puts bacon in a place of honor as a true gastronomic star. As we found in the course of writing this book, bacon goes with just about everything. More than that, everything is better with bacon.

Buy the Best Bacon: It Makes a Difference

“Why pay a little more for good bacon?” we are often asked. “Doesn’t all bacon taste pretty much the same?”

Yes and no. Like a bottle of regular table wine versus a prized vintage, bacon produced with the best ingredients will taste better. While it’s true that bacon made with cheap ingredients from unremarkable pork will probably taste okay—hey, salt, sugar, meat, and fat could make a pair of sneakers fairly palatable—we have found that when you can get it, bacon from artisanal producers, and especially bacon from premium free-range pork, is the way to go. It’s not just snob appeal. Your taste buds won’t lie to you.

More and more supermarkets now carry really fine bacon. Some brands, like Niman Ranch or Benton’s, are available in many parts of the country. There are now thousands of farmers’ markets where you will often find local farmers who raise their own pigs and cure their own bacon. Their production won’t be huge, and they are probably not known by more than the patrons of one or two markets, but how much do you need to make you happy? Latching on to one farmer who makes a really good product is like having your own private producer. Usually a lot more care goes into these small-production bacons than you can ever find with a big name brand.

We tried bacon from a number of quality producers when testing the recipes for this book and we recommend the ones you’ll find on
pages 289 to 297
without reservation. We’d be the first to admit, however, that if we really wanted to make something with bacon and all that was available was the nondescript supermarket stuff, we’d go ahead and cook with it. Even second-tier bacon has big flavor and “crispability.” Still, all things being equal, when we can, we go for the good stuff.

While we sometimes specify using a thick-cut rather than a regular-cut bacon in our recipes, we don’t as a rule call for a more specific bacon, such as cherrywood-smoked or a cracked black pepper bacon. You can assume that the more common applewood- or hickory-smoked bacon will work in the dish you are making. That said, today’s bacon producers, big and small, are having a wonderful time adding cinnamon, black pepper, jalapeño peppers, maple syrup, garlic, and other spices and flavorings to their bacon or using cherrywood and even wood from old whiskey barrels to create bacons with different flavors and aromas.

What’s in a Label?

 

As in many things where the USDA is involved, bacon labeling can be confusing. You may see bacons that are labeled
uncured
. This is a little misleading. In terms of the real world all bacon is cured—that is, it is treated with salt and sometimes sugar to help preserve the fresh pork. Bacon is also smoked. All smoked products have naturally produced nitrates that act as a preservative. Bacon that is labeled
cured
has had more nitrates added. Generally we prefer the so-called uncured bacon because it is more natural and has fewer possible adverse effects on one’s health.

Then there is the question of whether bacon is wet- or dry-cured. Wet-cured bacon is brined. Dry-cured is rubbed with salt and sometimes sugar and pepper. They are both good methods. We prefer the flavor and texture of dry-cured bacon, but it’s purely a matter of taste.