Count me as one of the people who’s trying to get a grip on all the bacon goodness spreading across the land. I mean, more and more of us are trying to eat healthy, for understandable reasons, but at the same time, there are countless people trying to find new and fascinating ways to use bacon.
It’s not that I mean to blaspheme bacon by saying it’s not good for you. Why wouldn’t a combination of fat, salt and grease be healthy? Heck, Bon Appetit says it’s one of 10 surprising health foods, and I love bacon as much as the next non-red-meat-eating carnivore. But I ask you to wrap your brain around the following baconcoctions.
First, the bacon explosion (as seen above). I was introduced to this last year at a friend’s birthday party. His wife made it for him, and it includes two pounds (yes, I said pounds, plural) of bacon, two pounds of Italian sausage, one jar of BBQ sauce and one jar of BBQ rub. This delicious monstrosity makes me sweat just thinking about it. I admittedly questioned its existence until I tasted it, and then all was forgiven.
And then, from the LA Times, came candied bacon ice cream, which I suppose is similar to chocolate chunks in ice cream, except the chunks are now bacon. Bacon for breakfast? Why not.
But it was what I found out over the weekend while in LA that really had me questioning the infusion of bacon into every possible dish. The bacon-wrapped matzoh ball. Making this dish requires, well, chutzpah, and lots of it. And apparently that’s what chef Ilan Hall (he of Top Chef fame) has, because it’s an amuse bouche at his restaurant, The Gorbals. As the Jewish Journal said back in November, “For every Jew offended by his matzoh balls, Hall thinks another two will indulge their inner Jewish rebel.”
I haven’t tasted the ice cream or the matzoh ball, so who am I to question the logic behind these endeavors? What I do know is that one of the joys of being human is eating delicious foods, so if adding bacon to just about anything can increase its deliciousness, then I say go for it.
What’s your favorite bacon oddity? Let us know.
Photo courtesy of mhaithaca via Flickr