For a B.A. in Bacon, They All Chewed the Fat
January 21, 2004
 By LINDA LEE
FROM the worried expressions as my guests stared at the
oven door - one of them asked, "Are you sure it's all right
in there?" - you would have thought there was a cat having
kittens in my oven rather than strips of bacon cooking in a
pan. They need not have worried.
Tossing a couple pounds of bacon into the oven turns out to
be a fine way to cook it, especially when you are handling
quantity and a party is going on. My guests were trying 11
kinds of bacon that night, an unexplored area of
connoisseurship for them, and for me.
Forget standing in a supermarket and peeling back the
little windows on the bacon package. (And what are people
looking for anyway, other than the least fat, which is the
whole point of bacon?)
The adventure in saturated fats I was offering my guests
meant tracking down hand-rubbed sides of bacon that have
been smoked by specialists like Jamie Nicoll in Culpepper,
Va., who uses words like "luster" to describe bacon fat and
"sexiness" to describe a particularly attractive rasher.
What is the best bacon out there? That's not the right
question, since one woman's slice of Danish slab bacon -
"delicious, unsalty, yummy, go Danes, wuff wuff!" she wrote
in her tasting notes - was another man's "dismal industrial
flavor that conjured up memories of tinned meat."
In fact, it was rare to find consensus among my 15
bacon-scarfing guests, even on Rain's 2B sugar-cured bacon,
a superwide shoulder bacon from Missouri, which tasted,
they said, like pastrami, corned beef or "an overcooked
Easter ham at a family gathering in Nebraska."
Which is not to say that my guests failed to finish any of
the bacon, snipped into bite-size pieces with shears.
Overdone, underdone, hammy, cured, uncured, with and
without nitrates, pastramilike - bacon, it turns out, is
still bacon.
The real question should be, Is there such a thing as bad
bacon?
Over a two-month period, inspired by a bacon-and-wine
tasting organized by the restaurateur Danny Meyer (who runs
Union Square Cafe and that palace of barbecued pork, Blue
Smoke), I sampled more than 20 bacons to prepare for my own
tasting. I was not alone in my gluttony. The National Pork
Board reports that bacon sales increased 45 percent from
1999 to 2000, the latest figures available.
There were significant differences between the meats. Bacon
makers guard their secret recipes as jealously as Aunt
Margaret guards the fact that she pours Courvoisier into
her candied sweet potatoes. But some will talk about their
pork bellies.
Bill Niman's nitrate- and nitrite- free line of bacon from
Niman Ranch in California is sold at many Whole Foods
stores and is considered almost organic. "Our hogs are
antibiotic-free, with a vegetarian diet," he said. "Our
pigs are all raised outdoors and never tethered."
That is the secret to good, fatty bacon, he said: cold
Midwestern winters. "To regulate body temperature, hogs
grow back fat," he said. His company sells that fatback as
its intoxicating lardo.
The experts agree that while it is, of course, a personal
preference, the less bacon is cooked, the better the taste.
Mr. Nicoll, who owns Summerfield Farms in Virginia, says he
eats his bacon "as underdone as you can stand it - I try to
keep as much fat in there as you can stand."
I kept that principle in mind while testing the 11 bacons
that made it to my final round. In it, I served my guests
the meat along with wine, beer and paper ballots. They were
asked to use any terms other than salty or smoky, and they
came through with flying colors.
At the top of the heap was the Summerfield Farms slab
bacon, described as "earthy, fatty, brisketlike," and "like
tiny loins or chops of real pig." A fellow from Wall Street
said: "Tastes like popcorn. An honest bacon, sticky and
meaty. A bacon eater's bacon. Macho."
A close second was Nueske's from Wisconsin, tasted in plain
and peppered form. The regular Nueske's, which may be
familiar from Balthazar, Pastis, Le Bernardin, the Harvard
Club and Cafe Centro, was described as a classic, "a bacony
bacon."
Nodine's apple-smoked bacon from Connecticut was praised as
"tangy ham that engages both the front and the middle of
the tongue," with "a light, smoke flavor" and a "delicious
aftertaste and good fat content."
Niman Ranch bacon from California also ranked well, with
comments like "surprisingly good," although the Wall Street
guest complained: "Almost seems too healthy? I want my
bacon life-threatening."
More heavily smoked and salted bacons did that job.
Carleton Farms bacon from Oregon was praised by one guest
as "an almost earthy flavor, perfectly chewy and yummy."
Another complimented it as "complex, gentle and pleasant,
after an unsettling initial maple kick." Another said,
"This is a pleasant little intoxicant."
Father's hickory-smoked bacon from Kentucky did not do so
well, prompting one guest to write: "New Salty Chews!"
Another guest said: "This would turn steel to rust
overnight" but also said it was "highly addictive."
Among pepper bacons, both the Nueske's and the New
Braunfels Smokehouse Pepper Bacon from Texas got good
marks. Nueske's was called "saucy and aggressive." The New
Braunfels had, one man said, "a seductive pepper finish, a
hint of game." But another, jaded taster said he thought
the New Braunfels bacon was "too conceptual."
The biggest surprise for many was Kunzler reduced-fat
peppered bacon from Pennsylvania. A bacon that achieves its
lower-fat status from careful trimming and a center cut,
the Kunzler got comments like "my favorite so far - with
just the right touch of fat." Another said: "Low fat? Wow,
a rich flavor. Can't tell the difference. Very good."
At this point, my guests paused to rehydrate. The
salt-per-serving numbers ranged widely, from 70 milligrams
for the Kunzler to 300 milligrams for a comparable amount
of the Fathers Hickory Smoked. But if you are reading
nutritional labels, perhaps bacon is not right for you.
Bacon belongs to the hedonist, the
throw-caution-to-the-winds sort who would eat a bacon
sandwich with a side of bacon.
When people arrived for my party, they said, "I could smell
the bacon all the way down to the front door." And they
meant it in a good way.
Rob Hurlbut, the president of Niman Ranch, said it best:
"Bacon should be listed as an aphrodisiac."