Bacon: Ingredient of the Year
Continuing The Year That Was with our pick for Ingredient of the Year.
I know it seems like a cliche and passé at this point, but I have to call a spade a spade, or perhaps I should say I have to call a pig a pig (but maybe not, more about that later).
Bacon is most assuredly the ingredient of the year.
Every important, influential, and innovative chef, from David Chang to Grant Achatz to Thomas Keller, made substantial use of bacon in 2008. It was used in appetizers, main courses, and desserts: bacon cookies, peanut butter and bacon "Elvis"cupcakes, and brittle, anyone? It even showed up in cocktails (bacon martini, anyone?).
It's used unadorned and as a mix-in, and served plain and fancy. It's used in cuisines around the world, from China to France to Italy to Mexico. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, brunch, snacks, small plates, big plate, medium plates, in diners and four-star restaurants, bacon is served anytime, anywhere, by anybody and everybody.
And not just any bacon. These days we know much more than the brand of bacon. We know who's been making it for how long, who's been raising the pigs, what breed of pig it's made from, what it's cured in, and how long it's smoked for using what kind of wood. We know what the pigs the bacon is made from have been eating. And in fact we know that sometimes it's not even made from pigs. GQ recently named lamb bacon as one of the best foods in the U.S.
So next year don't be surprised if cucumber bacon finds its way to a restaurant table or fancy-pants grocery store. We've even got food writers expounding on bacon fatigue. When someone writes a story about bacon fatigue that's when you know an ingredient is white-hot.
Hell, as I'm writing and thinking about this I'm thinking that we ought to award bacon the ingredient of the 21st century. I know we have 91 years to go, but based on the evidence outlined above, could any serious eater come to any other conclusion?
Bacon's gone from a supporting actor's role in the food universe to flat out cultural icon. Bacon's a star, damn it, and stars have to be treated and recognized as such.
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4 Comments:
Hooray, bacon! I hope the local chain groceries start carrying better quality bacon now.
I had a cousin by marriage -- much older than me and now passed away -- who loved to eat pork belly -- aka "fatback" (?from where?) for breakfast. No ham or sausage for him. He ate about 1/2 pound every morning. I'd grown up overseas eating a lot of pork, but I never saw a chunk of belly just fried up and eaten like that.
Just as long as bacon isn't deconstructed and served up in a martini glass with juniper berries, figs, cilantro and , I dunno -- cucumber foam!
TikiPundit at 11:28AM on 12/31/08
You're absolutely right...about bacon being "cliche and passé." As much as I enjoy bacon, the complete obsession so many "foodies" have for it is utterly tiresome.
While I usually enjoy reading SE, I grow weary of reading ridiculous posts that "make the cut" only because bacon is somehow involved (like this prime example).
Frankly, it's just not clever anymore. And it certainly hasn't just come about in 2008, which makes this post even more ridiculous. Yes, we all enjoy eating bacon and it can be used in infinite ways, but it's absurd to giggle like a six-year-old at the mere mention of it.
bradnelson at 12:58PM on 12/31/08
I knew that there was a strong bacon thing going on when my pic of bacon ice cream (from David Lebovitz's recipe) on Flickr broke 3000 views (http://www.flickr.com/photos/kaszeta/2485249502/ , and it's not that bad, really), although it goes at least back to early 2007 and the release of Mo's Bacon Bar.
That said, despite my love of bacon, there's a lot of really crappy bacon stuff out there that people are posting that really aren't foodie-worthy. And there's a lot of really crappy bacon out there as well (indeed, I'm a bacon snob, and usually pass on restaurant bacon unless I'm given a reason to think it's something other than over-friolated thin generic bacon). For every *good* bacon experience I've had this year (such as another shipment from Nodine's, or a tour of North Country Smokehouse), there's another tacky bacon-motif blog article on bacon bras or bacon-hedge that someone feels compelled to email to me.
kaszeta at 1:36PM on 12/31/08
Bacon is everywhere, but I agree that although this is not a new thing, there has been quite a bit of SE devoted to it. I suppose I just notice it more, since I'm Muslim and don't eat bacon. There are a lot of strange bacon related posts that are silly, but then again I suppose there are a lot of silly posts in general right? I've never had bacon, so maybe it is just that good. I've also never had a bacon substitute like turkey bacon - are they good? Should I give it a try?
evamonos at 2:21PM on 12/31/08