tl;dr

Steve has sent me word of another horrible/ingenious bacon related recipe: bacon caramel.

Essentially: make caramel, fry bacon until crisp, mix into liquid caramel with some roasted almonds, and leave to set. The question of “why would you do this” I leave to a higher power.

Bacon, Food

One pound of smoked bacon, minced, formed into a patty, stuffed with mozzerlla, beer-battered and deep-fried: good grief. I have my doubts that it would be too salty… perhaps better made with a mix of smoked and unsmoked bacon. His battered jalapeños look very nice too.

(Thanks to Craig for the link, who has no blog for me to link to.)

Bacon, Food

Oh my.

• two pounds of bacon, woven
• two pounds of sausage meat
• wrap bacon around sausage meat, roll into a sausage
• roast
• roll out a large sheet of croissant dough
• cover in scrambled egg
• cover in cheese
• place the bacon/meat… thing… in the center of the dough and roll up
• cook

The unholy result is the Bacon Wellington:

Edit from two hours later — god, this is making my hungry. This is the first one of these “stupid bacon creations” I’ve considered making. It’s the delicious looking croissant dough that keeps drawing me back.

Bacon, Food

Earlier, my very good friend Scott emailed me to ask: “what time is it? BACON TIME OF COURSE!”

Meanwhile, at almost the same minute, my spooky opinion twin Rodafowa queried my bacon obsession. I replied to him:

I’m not as obsessed with bacon as my blog suggests. I quite like eating it but I’ve never felt the need to weave it. My audience, however, is obsessed – my bacon posts get the most comments, and bacon related topics get emailed to me now. I have no idea what that’s all about, but I’m not knocking the hits!

and he came back with:

That’s awesome. And as the years go by it’ll inevitably snowball, each link you’re sent leading to a bacon-related post that convinces more people that bacon is the primary driving force in your life and inevitably causing even more links to be sent to you. Soon each time you look in your inbox there’ll be a dozen new items related to every possible aspect and permutation of sliced schweinfleish until you’re so heartily soul-sick of the stuff you never want to so much as lay eyes on a Frazzle again. But by this point it’s taken on a life of its own. People have been relating amused anecdotes to friends about the Internet’s Bacon-Lover, and despite your pleading you’re now subjected to a relentless bombardment of bacon-related stories from every corner of the world. Because you’re the Bacon Man now. You can’t turn on the TV for fear of catching a Walls advert or soap-opera fry-up that’ll leave you howling at the screen and tearing at your hair. You can’t go work because every potential employer is scared off by the growing madness in your eyes and the stories of your life-consuming bacon obsession. You definitely can’t go near the Internet.

Eventually, it all becomes too much, your mind snaps under the strain and you’re eventually shot by counter-terrorist police trying to blow up Denmark. The headline the next morning reads “MISTER BACON DIES”.

So, there you go, my epitaph is all wrapped up already. Which is convenient I suppose.

Bacon, Personal

Clearly, my reputation as a bacon connoisseur is growing, even though I’d never actually cook any of these crazy recipies. I’m just in it for the madness. Nevertheless I am now getting sarky comments about non-bacon content, so for all your schweinfleisch needs I urge you to consider Bacon Explosion: The BBQ Sausage Recipe of all Recipes at bbqaddicts.com.

Basically, it’s a bacon weave, covered with a layer of sausagemeat, coated in BBQ rub, filled with a layer of cooked bacon, covered in BBQ sauce, rolled into a sausage shape and hot smoked for a few hours, then finally coated in more sauce. The result:

Bacon, Food

Clearly, this bacon reputation thing is getting out of control. I swear, I’m not obsessed by it, but people keep sending me these cool links… The lastest is from Richie (his blog is well worth adding to your RSS incidentally) who sent me this link to bacon cups:

These are actually a good deal less ridiculous than my other recent food-related entries. For a start, BLT is a classic flavour combination; secondly the portions are human sized; and thirdly, apart from a few rashers of streaky bacon, it’s not unhealthy at all. Lettuce and cherry tomatos? Yeah, pile that stuff on.

Nevertheless, that is some damned cunning bacon engineering, Megan, and for that I salute you. Bravo!

Bacon, Food Food

Look at what I find myself about to eat! That’s what thinking about bacon all day does to you.

Bacon, Food Food

I think I’m getting a reputation, because people are sending me stupid foodstuffs now. Still, it’s a blog post that practically writes itself, and I am nothing if not lazy, so here goes.

Chris brought another mention of chicken fried bacon (here called country fried bacon, but it looks the same to me) to my attention. The article itself is just more of the same lunacy I’ve already covered, but the comments are recommended:

Please don’t turn bacon into a meme. By their very nature, memes are fads and come and go, blow up and become passe. I swear to God, if any fucking hipster looks at me sideways for enjoying bacon in 2010, I will lose it.

Amen, Tower18!

However, Rupert upped the ante with this act of lunacy from holytaco.net (which, it seems, was all over Digg for days before I saw it; I guess I’m just not hip enough).  Please do click through to the original article, because whoever ate this monstrosity deserves the hits; but these (blatantly stolen) pictures should encourage you:

You see, in bacon weaving — as with so much in life — the line between madness and genius is “fill with cheese”.

Bacon, Food Food, Funny

This time, unlike the Luther burger and chicken fried bacon, the stupidity is not in the concept. No, this is just a cheeseburger. Nothing daft there, right? Wrong! The stupidity comes with the scale of this cheeseburger:

ABCNews sent a reporter to try and eat this monster. He even took a competitive eating champion with him to help him out, who — unlike that tiny Japanese guy who can eat a squillion hotdogs a second — looks exactly how’d expect an American competitive eating champion to look. Right down to the meat sweats:

SPOILER WARNING: they failed. Some bafflingly huge numbers:

• 50 pounds of beef — so that’s 800oz, or 3.6 stone, or 22.6kg.
• a whole catering size packet of American cheese
• an entire head of lettuce
• several whole beef tomatoes
• a custom-baked bun big enough to hollow out and live inside
• it costs $160 — but if you, and up to four of your mates, can eat the whole thing in less than three hours you get it free and a $1000 prize on top. That’s still the equivalent of 40 standard quarter-pounder burgers each though. No-one has ever done it.

Still, if you’re not hungry for burgers, the same ABC article brings news of the biggest pancakes I’ve ever seen, several restaurants that do 72oz steaks, and some place that that does a 21-scoop ice cream special sundae where ” our scoops are really big, they’re like baseball sized”. Again, in all cases, if you can finish the food, you dine for free.

And yet America has an obesity problem! What an odd coincidence that is.

Bacon, Food Food

Continuing the fine traditions of stupid American Cooking embodied by the Luther Burger, m’learned friend Range Rover Wrecker Matt brings to my attention the concept of “chicken fried bacon”. “Chicken fried” seems to be some sort of stupid US slang for the process of deep frying something coated in breadcrumbs; its usually done to tenderised steak, so you end up with something similar to a Wiener Schnitzel.

However, as visionary Glen Kusak, winner of the State Fair of Texas “best taste” award notes:

Everything in Texas is chicken fried and bacon makes everything better so we thought we’d put the two together

So what does it look like? Watch this. Pay close attention to the onion rings at around 1:05 into the video, and the chicken fried bacon itself appears at 1:30.

Yes, that’s right: they are battering and deep frying bacon now. And they have onion rings big enough to serve as a makeshift belt, presumably because your heaving gut just broke the one you wore on your way to the diner. That’s doubly convenient! I have to try this. Quick! To the intercontinental conveyancing device! No need to pack — we’re not going to fit in these clothes when we’re done anyway!

Bacon, Food Food