Friday, June 28, 2013.
Joining The Club. Bacon Investigations.
Mary Ann awakened with a desire for a club sandwich. For the purpose, she bought a pound of Oscar Meyer thick-sliced, applewood-smoked, sea-salt cured bacon. I can almost see the lights in her brain flashing as she took in all these marvelous bacon characteristics.
But the wider and deeper my eating adventures have grown, the less regard I have for food products with too many descriptors alleging superior quality. Here are my reactions to this bacon, which Mary Ann told me a few seconds ago she loved.
Oscar Mayer. So what?
Thick-Sliced. It is my consistent observation that all sliced meats release more flavor when they are sliced thinly. This is especially true of deli meats, but I say it's true for bacon, too.
Unfortunately, thick-sliced is so widely perceived as being a mark of quality that customers are amenable to a higher price. So the pork bellies they start with are of better pedigree, and the curing and smoking are more painstaking, too. The benefit of the thick slicing on its own is, however, hard to see. The best bacons I've ever eaten were medium-thin sliced. And I've studied this since I was in my early teens.
Applewood-Smoked. Certainly better than charcoal-smoked, or (heaven help us!) liquid-smoked. That's what the proceeds of my home pit tells me.
Sea-Salt Cured. I defy anyone to distinguish a ham cured with sea salt (or pink Himalayan salt, or red Hawaiian salt, or any other special kind) from a ham of comparable quality cured with plain old round-box salt in a blind tasting.
Mary Ann fried up all the bacon, and I ate a few pieces. I did not expire with delight. It was good bacon, but just that.
The Marys made the club sandwiches at around noon, using deli roast turkey, great tomatoes and baby lettuce. But no mayonnaise. They forgot to get some. Mary Ann rummaged through her stash of little bottles from hotels she liked. (If our house doesn't have an inventory of three hundred little jars of jelly, ketchup, honey, shampoo, lotion, conditioner and mayonnaise, then we have six hundred.) The little jar of mayo she found looked yellow, though, and the expiration date was in the last administration. (Aha! So we can blame this on Obama, too.)
I dug around in the refrigerator and found a batch of my hamburger sauce from a week ago. That would have to do.
The sandwich was excellent, except for the lean parts of the bacon getting caught in my teeth. It was also substantial enough that instead of having supper, I cut the grass, which is growing at its most rapid pace these days.
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