The Year That Was on Serious Eats: Bacon
Last Friday we started our year-end review with the Top 10 most-viewed posts across Serious Eats land. Today, we're taking a look back at the food trends of 2008. We were originally going to do this in one post, but with all the stuff we've published this year, we would have worn out your scroll finger. So we've broken up this retrospective into more-digestible bits. Your tasting menu of 2008 begins this morning, fittingly enough, with bacon.
Bacon was all over the place on Serious Eats in 2008. That's not a huge change from 2007. And, for those of you who accuse us of being too baconcentric, let me just point out that our first bacon post of the year did not appear until the late, late date of January 3*. Here are some notable bacon items of 2008:
Just a sampling: How it's made, edible bacon bowls, the bacon bra(!), a bacon tiara, a bacon costume, bacon soap, and, yuck, bacon in a can. That's not to mention the very recent cheese-filled bacon roll and strange and brilliant way to baconify any website.
Unlikely foods to include bacon: bourbon, gelato, chocolate, more chocolate, cupcakes, cinnamon rolls, doughnuts, mayo (though there's no real bacon in this vile stuff), and Chex mix.
Weird: Someone looking to send a message to Congressional Representative John Boehner (R-Ohio) over the banking bailout in early October caused the congressman's local offices in West Chester, Ohio, to be evacuated. The jokester sent a package of, yes, bacon. (It's pork, get it? Har har.)
Some folks accused hipsters of ruining bacon, but we don't believe it can ever be ruined. (Well, maybe it can—by bacon dust.)
* Shocking, I know. I'll make sure we start 2009 with a bacon post on New Year's Day.
More of The Year That Was
Pizza
Food as Other Stuff
TYTW on Serious Eats New York
Movies
Food in Space
Food Media
Food Shortages, Scares, and Rising Costs
Videos
Science
Starbucks
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10 Comments:
this is why i love you, adam--you know us so well!
praise the lard!
gastronomeg at 10:08AM on 12/29/08
Glad you liked this, Gastronomeg. It's fun (albeit slow-going) work slogging through the archives and IDing the recurring themes of the year. I pretty much knew bacon would be a touchstone before setting out on this madness. Hopefully we're not zonking people out with these. But if we are, oh well. I'm having a blast doing it!
Adam Kuban at 10:32AM on 12/29/08
People just love bacon.
sarag22 at 10:42AM on 12/29/08
Adam,
I'm still recovering from reading all about the cinnamon rolls. Delicious, forbidden, and ... confusing, all at once. Thanks for the retrospective on one of life's greatest foods!!
Dan
Casual Kitchen
Dan at Casual Kitchen at 11:21AM on 12/29/08
I'm hooked on Black Forest bacon these days. Everything's better with bacon!
AlisonEats at 11:21AM on 12/29/08
oh baconnaisse link is borked!
GretchinF at 11:25AM on 12/29/08
my year in bacon began and will end with SE-related bacon. i have saved (at great cost to me in letting it sit unused) the last three month's worth of the bacon of the month club bacon i won last december.
a pal and i are plotting a january 4 polar bear cookout that will consume them all in one last bac-orgy of pork...and because we're a little bit redneck and it's fall, there will be venison lasagna and venison pot pie too. i am certain each will have bacon included.
thanks SE gang!
kitchengeeking at 12:48PM on 12/29/08
Adding bacon to a dish is also a sure-fire way to win a challenge in Top Chef.
grubhub at 4:31PM on 12/29/08
Bacon must have been the REAL food of the gods! (As opposed to ambrosia which is mentioned in mythology.) I saw my favorite use of bacon, so far, on a Dinner Impossible episode. Michael Symon dipped the crispy bacon in chocolate!!!! It was desert!!!! OMG!
lindy123 at 7:15PM on 12/29/08
It's true. Bacon is a national addiction these days. Two of my top-ten reader favorites this year were also about bacon.
The one thing I think we're really missing out on is a youtube video of Kevin Bacon Cookin' Bacon. Then the circle will be complete.
missginsu at 10:47AM on 01/01/09