Sara Perry - Everything tastes better with bacon: 70 fabulous recipes for every meal of the day

IN THE MORNING, the sound and smell of bacon cooking in the skillet give me the feeling that I have time. I can relax and savor the day. Wonderful to share, bacon is also the quintessential comfort food when youre alone. The reason goes to the essence of what bacon is and maybe even to its ancient role as the food that took whole families through the winter. When cornflakes wont do it and bagels seem boring, try Daddys Fluffy Scrambled Eggs with Bacon, Sweetie-Pie Pancake with Brown Sugar Apples and Bacon, or Brie and Bacon Frittata.

If you havent had bacon for breakfast (or even if you have), theres always lunch. A hamburger tastes so much better as a bacon cheeseburger, and a BLT without bacon is nothing more than salad and toast. Bacon makes these classic icons. Same goes for the Club Sandwich, the Kentucky Hot Brown, and the Cobb Salad, which youll also find in this book. But bacon enhances other not-so-familiar but oh-so-tasty recipes, too. Warm Potato Salad with Bacon and Arugula is just the thing for a family reunion, and Risotto with Spicy Pepper Bacon and Marsala is a great winter dish for a get-away weekend or dinner by the fire. Autumn Soup with Cinnamon-Pepper Croutons turns the lowly yam into a savory, cold-weather soup flavored with fresh sage, rosemary, and thyme (and those sweet and zesty croutons are good enough to munch on their own).

As far as dinner goes, theres a reason writer and humorist Calvin Trillin wants to replace Thanksgiving turkey with Spaghetti alla Carbonara. Its the bacon, what else? Bacon makes Sunday night meat loaf irresistible and can wrap itself around a filet mignon better than a bow around a present, as youll discover with Schmidtys Meat Loaf with Biscuits Instead and Bacon-Wrapped Filet Mignon with Makers Mark Peppercorn Sauce. And for plain, old-fashioned comfort, Marvelous Mashed Potatoes with Bacon is a meal by itself. Speaking of vegetables, if you have kids, this book (and the bacon) will entice them to eat their leafy greens, beans, and even zucchini.

You might assume theres no dessert that could possibly taste better with bacon, but youre in for a surprise. The dessert recipes youll find here will delight you. Your friends will rave about the Pear-Apple Crisp with Brown Sugar-Bacon Topping, the Ruby Raisin Mincemeat Tart with Mulled Wine Sorbet, and the Try-It-Youll-Like-It Bacon Brittle (as the name suggests, one bite and the whole batch is history).

Cooks have always known that bacon adds shadowy richness, earthy fragrance, and subtle nuance to elegant entres and everyday comfort foods such as baked beans, chowders, and pies. Thats because bacon has two humble but charismatic ingredients that transform every food it touches: salt and fat. Salt brings out flavor, and fat carries flavor to our taste buds. But not only thatbacon has bite. Its chewy and crunchy. Savory. Slightly sweet. And habit-forming.

Like an artist whos had a career slump, bacon is enjoying a renaissance. Its about time. Previously disgraced as a fat, preservative-laden meat, bacon now offers many healthier options. Its leaner; its tastier; its free of chemicals, too. Artisan-style farms are raising pigs without hormones or antibiotics, and theyre producing natural organic bacons that satisfy an appetite for old-fashioned flavor. Youll find them mentioned throughout this book, as well as information on where to find them (see ).

HAPPILY EVER AFTER

In England, throughout the Middle Ages, if a man and wife could prove their first year of marriage was blissful and free of disharmony, they were entitled to a flitch, or slab, of bacon. From this custom came the saying bringing home the bacon.

ITS TAX TIME! WHERES MY BLT?

Its official. In the United States, April is National BLT Month. Thats right, folks, but where are we gonna find a sun-ripened tomato in April?

BACON IS CURED PORK, one of those wonderful creations that arose out of necessity.

Before refrigeration, the only way to preserve meat was to cure it. In China, techniques for curing pork were developed nearly four thousand years ago. In Rome, sometime during the first century A.D., the epicurean nobleman Marcus Gavius Apicius wrote the worlds first-known recipe book and naturally included a method for curing meat. In his book, he instructs cooks to salt the meat for 17 days, dry it for 2 days in the open air, and then smoke it for an additional 2 days. Little has changed in two thousand years, except that Apicius recommended storing the cured meat in oil and vinegar.

Salt dehydrates the meat and kills the microbes by dehydrating them, too. It also seems to change the color of the meat. This is not actually the result of the salt but of an impurity in the salt, a naturally occurring nitrate. During the Middle Ages, saltpeter (potassium nitrate) was discovered. Initially it was used as a fertilizer and in gunpowder, but made the leap to meat in the sixteenth or seventeenth century after it was learned that it had a positive effect on bacons color and flavor when it was used in curing.

In the United States, bacon was a staple in the colonists larder (the word larder comes from the Latin word for bacon fat). In the 1600s, early colonists used English recipes to cure bacon but soon learned new ones from the Indians who cured venison.

Today, with refrigeration, curing is done simply to add flavor to meat. Were accustomed to the cured taste, and we like it. But because dry salt-curing and smoking are time consuming and expensive, most large-scale meat processors cure their bacon in a salt brine, to which other flavorings and sweeteners are added, or inject their meats with a saline solution, using hundreds of needles to pump up weight (and profit margins). Thats one reason why many bacons exude a whitish, watery fluid when cooked.

Because studies suggest nitrates are carcinogenic, many people are concerned about nitrates in bacon. The amount of nitrates has been steadily decreasing in all bacon, and it is now possible to obtain nitrate-free bacon. So, be sure to read label ingredients.

Small artisan-style bacon producers offer bacon lovers a new and growing market of delicious bacons that dont shrivel; they sizzle. There are a wonderful range of bacons from which to choose that are dry-cured or brine-cured in simple salt and sugar solutions, often without nitrates (see ).