[Recipe] Bacon + Mushroom Omelette

This is the first recipe in which I remember using bacon (outside of standalone breakfast bacon). The saltiness of the bacon seasons the juicy mushrooms perfectly.

Eggs (3)
milk/water/whatever you put in your omelettes
Bacon (sliced, two pieces)
Mushrooms (chopped, however much)
Thyme (pinch)
Salt/pepper (to taste)

Fry bacon. Sauté mushrooms, sprinkle in thyme. While sautéing mushrooms, slice bacon into small pieces. Mix up eggs with milk/butter/water to desired fluffiness. Pour, add bacon and mushroom filling. Flip when ready.

This is pretty basic... one can add cheese (just kidding, cheese is gross), and I've mixed in tuna, celery, whatever with the basic bacon/mushroom combination. I used plain button mushrooms, and Hempler's Smoked Bacon (review coming soon).

Awesome picture features my terrible omelette flipping skills. Click to embiggen.

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Bacon Review - Daily's Applewood Smoked Thick Sliced Bacon

Founded in Missoula, Montana in 1893, Daily's has been supplying the West with bacon, ham, and sausage for well over 100 years. Their website has a cute page about their history, featuring nostalgic black and white photos of men with inordinately obtrusive mustaches.

Branding themselves as "the bacon specialists", Daily's offers center-cut, thick sliced bacon in hardwood smoked, honey cured, and peppered varieties. I acquired my applewood smoked bacon by the slice, at Harbor Greens (Gig Harbor, WA). According to Daily's it seems to be available at most supermarkets in packaged servings, as well.

Before I go any further, I will confess that for the longest time, Daily's was my standby bacon. While I've branched out, it still reserves a special place in my stomach. I will try to continue without bias though.

It's not really necessary to cook Daily's to taste it—most of the flavor is in the applewood smoke. Not to fool you though, the actual meat still retains some of the apple flavor. Along with the sugar used in curing, Daily's Applewood Smoked is altogether a very sweet, flavoury bacon.

The cut I got was considerably fatty—the fat and greasiness levels were pretty congruent with what I remembered of Daily's. While the sweet and smokey flavor is enjoyable, the aftertaste is somewhat marred by the amount of grease.
(Note: If you're a freak like me, the greasiness is redeemed in the recycle value of saving your bacon grease—a little goes a long way, and Daily's renders a lot of grease.)

The salt played its role in preserving the meat, but didn't do much past that. Since it lacked a strong porky flavor, more or less salt wouldn't have improved nor detracted from the bacon.

Thick slicing offered more bacon per serving, but detracted from the texture as the bacon neither really cooked flat nor formed succulent wrinkles—this led to problems for me as the edges of the slice would darken, while the fatty areas took longer to cook.

Altogether, I would give Daily's Applewood Smoked bacon a try for the balance of applewood smoke and sugary sweetness. However, the grease and texture is a bit of a drawback, and ultimately it lacks the porky umph that defines the ideal slice of bacon.

Due to the unique flavor, I can't recommend it for cooking in bacon-enriched recipes. Otherwise, Daily's stands well on its own, and is great by itself or in a breakfast setting.

Daily's Applewood Smoked Thick Sliced Bacon:

[Overall] ~~~

[Pork] ~~
[Salt] ~~~
[Fat] ~~
[Smoke] ~~~~~

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[Recipe] Huevos Rancheros (con Panceta)

For some reason I usually end up eating breakfast foods after 10PM. Here's how I've been doing eggs lately.

In order of assembly:

tortilla (1)
egg (1)
sliced bacon (2 slices worth)
salsa
sour cream
hot sauce

Fry bacon, slice while egg is frying. Heat tortilla in pan shortly before egg finishes.
Assemble and eat.

I like the variety of tastes and texture. Good stuff.

Here is a pretty graphic to illustrate said victuals (click to bigify).

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Ready to go!

Old reviews posted, essential design tweaking complete... whew. Very frustrating but quite rewarding.

I'm ready to eat some freakin' bacon already.

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Bacon Review 12/30 - Hempler's Pepper Bacon

Pepper bacon is one of those things I've been meaning to try forever, in limbo on the eternal to-do list. I was super stoked to try Hempler's Pepper Bacon, as I received a pound of this fine pork product as one of the most kick-ass Christmas gift ever.

Hempler's is based out of Ferndale, WA, a rough 130 miles from Tacoma. Local points. They supply pretty much anywhere—you can find it by the slice at your local grocery—my particular cut was from Ray's Meat Market (of Local Boys Produce—Gig Harbor, WA). Besides bacon, they serve all manner of meats, including nitrite-free products, yay.

The claim "lean pork belly" (somewhat of an oxymoron) is used by a lot of bacon brands, few of which deliver. I got lucky with a seriously lean cut, I'd say only 20ish% fat. The first thing I noticed after two minutes of cooking was no pools of grease.

The initial taste of Hempler's was the porkiness. From the first bite I was sold—my bacon philosophy revolves around merely using seasoning/processing to frame the inherent flavor, keeping the pork taste sacred. There was no overpowering salt flavor, or greasiness to detract from the natural flavor.

"No salt flavor" was a double-edged sword, however. Slightly more salt could have enhanced the taste a bit more. Even so, I admire Hempler's for the purity of vision in sticking to pepper for making pepper-cured bacon. I may not have mentioned it yet, the whole freaking side of the pork belly was encrusted with pepper. Beauty.

While the taste was mainly porky, the pepper flavors came out near the end, continuing into the aftertaste. Overall I loved this bacon for the pure porkiness combined with low fat content. I enjoyed the seasoning, but it could have been balanced just slightly more in favor of salt.

Hempler's Pepper Bacon:

[Overall] ~~~~

[Pork] ~~~~
[Salt] ~~
[Fat] ~~~~
[Seasoning/Smoke] ~~

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Bacon Review 12/28 - Farmer's Hickory Brand Applewood Smoked Sliced Bacon

By virtue of reading this, you aren't one to think of bacon as "gross". But this bacon was gross. Upon removing the shiny gold packaging, my fingers were coated with a layer of slime. Not natural bacon fattiness, or pleasantly preserved moisture, but a slime—possibly produced by the combination of sodium derivatives. I washed my hands and pressed on.

The cut of Farmer's wasn't anything special—but due to the aforementioned sliminess, the texture was a definite drawback. Possibly the only good thing out of this bacon, it released a great fragrance while cooking. Applewood is one of my favorite flavors, and the reason I bought Farmer's bacon (aside from the shiny gold package). However, the smoke flavor stopped there. I didn't get much out of the actual taste of the bacon.

Pork and salt were pretty balanced in Farmer's. The fat was way overpowering though—it felt like it was essentially soaked in grease. I attribute this to the same curing process that produced the nasty bacon slime.

While initially blinded by the gold packaging, upon closer inspection I realized Farmer's was packaged in San Jose, California. Thus the preservatives and resulting taste, justifiable by the great shipping distance. With a quick googling of Farmer's I found Mohawk Packaging Co., a subsidiary of John Morrell & Co.. The corporate family tree goes further as I discovered John was a family member of Smithfield Foods, a global food giant, and in fact the world's largest pork company (if you want to read about factory farming and companies that torture pigs, check out the Wikipedia article. As an aspiring locavore, at this point I was feeling more gross than after I had consumed the actual bacon.

Overall Farmer's Applewood Smoked Bacon was greasy, and the applewood flavor wasn't really there. I could taste a good balance of salt and pork, but only behind layers of sodium preservatives. Alas. All the more of a case for local food, I suppose.

Farmer's Applewood Smoked Sliced Bacon:

[Overall] ~

[Pork] ~~~
[Salt] ~~
[Fat] ~
[Smoke] ~~

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Bacon Review 12/10 - Idaho Gold Country-Style Bacon

I had a hard time finding any information on Idaho Gold... there's nothing on the internet, so one can only conclude that this extraordinary pork belly is produced by Amish farmers, blessed by Mennonite pastors, and shipped from the middle of nowhere, Idaho.

The first thing to note about Idaho Gold Country-Style (damn, let's call it IGCS) is the price. $3.99 a pound, which is quite cheap by most standards, possibly the least expensive bacon I've ever bought. I did buy this bacon from Harbor Greens, known to flaunt significant discounts on food, however.



IGCS may be the most well-rounded bacon I've tasted, ever. The slices are thick cut, but they wrinkle well as they cook. Wrinkling is instrumental in cooking bacon to the prized "crispy, but slightly chewy" point.

When you dream of the perfect bacon, it smells like IGCS. The fragrance was perfect. Salt and fat levels were balanced—I didn't even notice these tastes, while the pork was stealing the show. To my knowledge, IGCS is not smoked, but whatever seasonings they used in curing produced a perfect pork belly.

I'm not one to pick favorites among bacon, but all I will say is this: this is what bacon is supposed to taste like. It tastes like what it is, pork—and the pork flavor shines without being overpowered by salt or greasiness. Given the reasonable price, IGCS is a great all-around bacon to have at any time. IGCS is available at Harbor Greens (Gig Harbor, WA), and possibly Tacoma Boys (Tacoma, WA) — I'm pretty sure they use the same distributor.

Idaho Gold Country-Style Bacon:

[Overall] ~~~~

[Pork] ~~~~~
[Salt] ~~~
[Fat] ~~~
[Seasoning] ~~~

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Bacon Review 12/05 - Fletcher's Hickory Smoked Bacon

Founded in 1917, Fletcher's is a Canadian food producer, part of the Sofina private label. Fletcher's offers "a carefully selected line of Fletcher’s branded protein products" of hams and sausage as well as bacon. They rub Canadian lean pork belly with seasoning, dry cure, then finally smoke the bacon.

Fletcher's bacon comes in a few smoke varieties, including maple and hickory. I've had yet to try Fletcher's or hickory-smoked bacon so this was a new taste for me. I bought the 20 oz. (1.25 lbs.) Stak Pak, which is a little more bacon than I usually eat, but I went through it faster than usual (a testament to it's tastiness?). I liked the packaging as it was clear and locked in moisture—usually I buy bacon by the pound and it's just wrapped in paper, which can lead to drying out.

The bacon was thick cut, but it experienced the shrinkage/warping of thin-sliced bacon. I thought this was odd, as the cut was average in fattiness-to-meat ratio, too. Not bad if you prefer a twisted texture, but I'm generally lean toward flat. The taste was initially salty, with more hickory flavor toward the finish. Possibly too salty for more than a few slices by themselves, but it would definitely be welcome in a sandwich or something.

Finally, this bacon was really freakin' dirty. It left a whole lot of shit in the pan, more so than your average bacon. Overall, I thought it was decent, but not the best. The hickory flavor was great, but it was overly salty and overpowered the inherent pork flavour.

Fletcher's Hickory Smoked Bacon:

[Overall] ~~~

[Pork] ~~
[Salt] ~~
[Fat] ~~~~
[Smoke] ~~~~~

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