I've always been a fan of bacon, not in the Homer Simpson "mmmmmm bacon on everything" vein, but enough so that I usually have a package in the house. I wouldn't try chocolate covered bacon, bacon cupcakes, or bacon ice cream, and yes, I've seen all three of those choices. As long as it's not Canadian, or slabs of Virginian, I'd pick bacon over sausage as a breakfast side any day. My preference would be for the bacon strips to be well-done, just short of burnt, nice and crispy with blackened edges. But lately I'm not liking bacon too much.
At first I thought it was because I bought the off-brand that was on sale. In case you haven't noticed bacon has gotten a little more expensive this past year. I think it was Armour, or something else that I don't normally buy, so I wasn't surprised by the taste of it. I just threw it out and told myself to stick to what I know.
I usually buy Kroger bacon so the next time that's the brand I went with. I noticed it was pretty fatty which normally isn't a problem for me, but when it was cooking the fat was not getting golden brown and the red part was looking strange. It even smelled "different." When I tasted it, yuk! And, I could barely chew it. My husband thought it didn't taste good either and scolded me for being so cheap, "Just buy Oscar Meyer, will ya?" The last time I checked Oscar Meyer was going for $6.99, so when I saw it on sale for $3.99 I jumped.
Well, Sunday morning I tried making bacon again, with the brand name expensive Oscar Meyer. Didn't make a difference. It sucked. It smelled weird, the texture was off and it tasted piggy-like. Yeah, I know where bacon comes from, but this tasted like I was licking a pig's skin that had been rolling around in mud or something. When my husband complained about me "cheaping out" again, I showed him the Oscar Meyer package. So we sat down and tried to think about the reasons bacon has gone downhill.
I thought it could have something to do with what the pigs are being fed. Maybe all this Monsanto-franken foods are doing something to the pigs. Unless you pick them from your own back yard, tomatoes no longer have taste. Same thing with a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables, which I attribute to the Monsanto seeds they are grown from. My husband said he had heard that the corn crops were bad this year, too much corn was being used for ethanol, and that many pigs couldn't be fed and had to be killed younger than they usually are.
I don't know what's going on, but I swear something is not right. What about you, have you noticed bacon isn't what it used to be?
Find your self a good meat market and have your bacon sliced after you've selected the right slab. It should be roughly 50/50 fat to lean, not speckled with lean, but a streak or two throughout from one end to the other. Might even be able to find it downtown on market square. Here I get mine at a little mop and pop grocery store. My sister uses a real butcher shop in Martinsville.
ReplyDeleteTried fresh bacon from downtown and from a friend...way too salty, and way too thick. I'm going to give bacon one more go and splurge by buying Boar's Head brand. If that sucks too, that's it for me.
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