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Monday, July 18, 2011

Bacon. Mmmmm, bacon.....

Frying your bacon is so passé. La Quercia caused quite the stir at this year’s Fancy Food Show in Washington, D.C., when it premiered its new Tamworth bacon. What was the big deal? Make that a raw deal – this bacon is meant to be eaten uncooked.
The company uses pasture-raised, antibiotic-free Tamworth hogs (an English breed known as the “bacon pig”), grown especially for La Quercia over the last four years by a farm in Osage County, Missouri. The pork is cold-smoked using applewood and rubbed with sea salt and spices, with none of the nitrates you usually find in bacon.
“To me, there are two things that really distinguish the Tamworth from other types of bacon,” said Herb Eckhouse, who owns La Quercia (Italian for “the oak”) with his wife Kathy. “One thing is that it cures up really sweet. That means it has a nice, natural sweetness to it without having to add any sugar. The other thing that distinguishes it is the fat. The fat isn’t rich and creamy like you’d get with a Berkshire pig. It’s very soft, making it a nice complement to the meat instead of overwhelming it.”
So, how does he eat it?
“I like to eat it raw or just very lightly cooked,” he said. “You don’t want to crisp it or you’ll lose the fat. You want the fat to just melt in your mouth.”
- http://bites.today.com/_news/2011/07/15/7089859-fear-of-frying-raw-bacon-hogs-spotlight-at-fancy-food-show


- Claymore

9 comments:

  1. Yeah, you just want the fat to melt in your mouth.............and clog up your fuckin artery's by the time you're twenty five. ....LOL
    Nahhhh, I'll fry mine crisp and clog up my artery's anyway.

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  2. Really!
    Nice and CRISPY, please!

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  3. I cannot eat fat unless it's fried really well, so you almost can't tell it's fat.
    If I try, I'll be upchucking in 10 minutes, *if* I can even get it down.
    And we're talking MAJOR shits the next day.
    "Grease through a goose" aint even close!

    Raw meat doesn't bother me, I just can't eat raw fat.
    Seriously....

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  4. Just fucking with you, Jim.
    I trim the fat off most of my bacon and throw it in another pan for rendering, then into CharlieGodammits' dish for further recycling.

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  5. Bryn, North Wales, UKJuly 20, 2011 at 9:20 AM

    Cold smoked ham & bacon is a delicacy over here in the UK and even more so in Europe, and easily available. Is it really so rare in the States?
    For those that prefer fried bacon, it does fry up really well without losing all the flavour - just leave all the fat on until its crisped.
    Ok, now I'm drooling, short break while I fire up the grill....

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  6. looked tamworth bacon up on the web - $17.95 a pound!!

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  7. Bryn, North Wales, UKJuly 20, 2011 at 6:16 PM

    Hi Steve,
    That price has got to be because of scarcity/novelty value.
    Typical prices (for Tamworth origin) over here would be:

    Bacon 1lb - £4.50 - US$7.25

    Half pig(40lbs) - £80.00 - S$129.00

    The prices above are about DOUBLE the going price for ordinary UK supermarket bacon, & reflect the quality & relative scarcity even here.

    ReplyDelete

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