Bacon Du Jour

Baconfest Chicago: Today's the day!

2011-04-09T08:29:00.000-05:00

Bacon makes Chicago-based Top Chef
Stephanie Izard happy.

At 11:30 today, the doors will open to the UIC Forum, letting all the eager Baconfest Chicago VIP attendees into the bacon-scented air of their beloved festival. An insane number of pork-minded chefs (including Chicago's very own Top Chef Stephanie Izard, of Girl and the Goat) will be offering their wares to the assembled masses in the quest to be declared Baconfest's best by the baconeers. The lucky, lucky VIPs like Head BDJ Lab Tech Jenni S. will get to try them all first. She's especially excited about dishes from:

Paul Fehribach (of Big Jones)
Gil Langois (of Chalkboard)
Jared Wentworth (Longman & Eagle)
Carrie Nahabedian (of Naha)
Roger Herring (of Socca), last year's Baconfest Chicago big winner

Not saying who we're rooting for, but here's a hint: it rhymes with "fries hard."

For a full list of the chefs showing off at Baconfest 2011, click here.

BACONFEST CHICAGO: One week to go!

2011-04-02T06:57:00.000-05:00

Breathable bacon finally--FINALLY!--a reality

2011-03-29T08:23:00.000-05:00

Editor's note: We were so enthused to get this press release from the folks at Bacon Salt that we couldn't breathe. Ironically, this product--if we actually had it in our hands right now, instead of just pining after it--would HELP that problem. Read on, baconeers...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

J&D’s Foods set to launch BaconAir™ Refreshing and Savory New Line of Bacon flavored Oxygen
Three years ago J&D’s Foods made a much healthier bacon delivery mechanism called Bacon Salt. It’s a zero calorie, zero fat, vegetarian, kosher and low sodium seasoning that makes everything taste like bacon –to many, it was Bacon 2.0.

Since then, our team of research scientists has been working hard on making the next leap to Bacon 3.0.

Studies have shown that inhaling pure oxygen can boost energy, fight disease, increase mental focus, enhance sexual and/or sports performance, and increase mental alertness as well as save lives.

After 2 grueling years of research, we are proud to announce the next quantum leap in bacon technology. We call it BaconAir™, and it’s a revolutionary new product that combines the deliciousness of bacon with the unrivaled health benefits of 95% pure Himalayan oxygen. Some of the benefits include:
* Convenient and Easy to Use
* No Calories, Fat or Stimulants
* Non-Prescription
* Maximum Deliciousness

J&D’s Foods is giving away a lifetime supply of BaconAir to one lucky Baconnoisseur - just send us an email to baconair@jdfoods.net with why you think you should be the first person to use BaconAir and we'll select a winner!

About J&D’s Foods

Headquartered in Seattle, Washington, J&D’s Foods manufactures Bacon Salt®, Baconnaise®, BaconPOP®, Bacon Ranch, Bacon Gravy, Bacon Soda, Bacon Lip Balm, Mmmvelopes and Malt Salt™. A leader in the specialty food industry, J&D’s is known for combing unique flavors people know and love and innovative bacon themed charity initiatives such as Bacon Kevin Bacon, Bacon vs. Mayo wrestling and the Bacathlon.

Bacon, business and boobs star at Ignite Chicago

2011-03-24T10:45:00.000-05:00

Photo by Bridget Houlihan (aka @Wheelygrl)

Last night's Ignite Chicago--a series of short yet inspirational presentations--was a success. In addition to Head BDJ Lab Tech Jenni S. discussing how one can make one's one bacon at home, other speakers addressed the pleasure of driving, the science of successful startups, pleasurable driving and the evolution of American attitudes toward the female form.

Since Jenni only had 5 minutes to present her presentation, she thought she'd expound upon it here and share her entire talk, with some added notes. Please keep in mind that while speaking, she interjected many funny, insightful comments, so you should laugh out loud periodically to best duplicate the experience of being there in person.

1. Intro: Making bacon at home is time-consuming, but fairly easy. You just need a few common household items to do it, and materials you can get at your friendly neighborhood supermarket. In addition, smoking your own bacon gives you the added benefit of making whatever clothes you wear smell like the inside of an old-time smokehouse. My cell phone even smells like hickory smoke--even four days after I did the bacon smoking.

2. Why make it yourself: In addition to being crazy simple:
* patronizing local butchers or groceries and making the bacon yourself, rather than procuring from a big corporate meat processor far, far away is good for the environment, and good for your local economy.
* it can be cheaper than store brands
* you can make your own flavors--you're not stuck with the small selection in grocery stories
* DIYing meat is fun

3. Pork belly: This is the star of the show. It's a long, thin cut of meat that looks a lot like a slab of ribs. Order it without the pig skin (or pork rind), if you can--however, if you can't or don't get it without the skin (sometimes you can encounter language barriers at grocery stores), don't worry about it--leave it on and we'll remove when we're done smoking the meat. Start with 5 lbs of meat.

4. Where to get belly: You can get belly at local butchers, ethnic grocery stores, or even farmers' markets. I get mine at HarvesTime on Lawrence. Some grocers sell belly in individual strips, but you want one large hunk to start with.

5. Curing salt: This is a mixture of salt and preservative, also known as "prague powder," and it's not on every supermarket shelf, but it's not very hard to find. Look at The Spice House, Paulina Meat Market, or meat-minded sites like SausageMaker.com. Use 1/2 tsp of this.

6. Regular salt: Your salt could be sea salt, regular, iodized or not--just as long as it's salty. Mix 1/2 C of this with the curing salt.

7. Wood chips: You can really use any kind of natural wood chips, but they have to be soaked in wood (or beer, if you like) for at least three hours before you start smoking. If they're dry, they'll just burn right up without adding flavor to your meat. If they're wet, they provide the smoke that helps make bacon special. If you throw about 3-4 decent-size handfuls of chips in the water, you'll be okay.

8. The fire: You need a big charcoal grill, not just a weenie dinner-plate-size grill you'd take to the beach. Because you're cooking with indirect heat, you need a grill big enough for you to put the coals on one side, and the meat on the other side. Weber kettle grills work well. Also, briquettes.

9. Waiting: The process takes about three hours, not including the time it takes to start the grill, and you can't leave the grill unattended, so you'll need something to amuse yourself. I recommend a good book, and a good beer (or several).

10. Two days out: You'll start curing the meat by rubbing with the mixture of salts, then slipping into Ziplocs. If you need to cut the belly up to fit it into two or more bags, that's fine. Flip the slabs of meat over once a day to ensure even curing. You can also add...

11. Optional flavors: When you're putting on the salt, you can add flavorings--jalapenos, garlic, orange peel, spice blends or any number of tasty additions. A good rule of thumb is if you like it on pork, you'll probably like it on bacon. Feel free to get crazy with it. Each flavor should go in its own separate Ziploc, obviously.

12. Start the grill: Fire up those charcoal briquettes. Once they start getting less flamey and more glowy, you're going to push them all the way to one side of the grill.

13. Add the chips: Take a small handful and toss them right on top of the coals. They'll start smoking in a few seconds. I recommend standing downwind, if you can, to avoid irritating your eyes.

14. Get cooking: Cover your grate with foil, poke some holes in the half of the grate that's over the coals, and throw the pork on the other side

15. Total time: From the time you throw the pork on until the time it's done will take about three hours--you can go one hour more, or less, depending on how smoky you like it. If the smoke dissipates, add a handful of chips. If the heat's dying down, add a few coals. Look at the meat--if the fat is melting, your fire is too hot and you should get rid of a few coals, or remove the meat until the coals are a bit cooler.

16. You've got bacon: After three hours, you'll have a not-very-pretty looking hunk of meat. It'll be dark, brown, dirty, maybe even look burned on the edges. Don't worry--as with many other things in life, it's what's on the inside that counts. At this point, if your butcher didn't remove the rind, you can do that yourself--it works best when the meat is still warm. You can use two forks--one to hold the meat, the other to pierce and peel the rind. Discard the rind, or, if you're so inclined, use it to make your own smoky pork rinds.

17. Cutting it up: Use a sharp, long knife to cut about 1/4 inch thick. Thickness really affects flavor and texture--thick bacon cooks crisp on the outside, chewy on the inside, and is just overall more fun to eat than super-skinny strips.

18. Cooking it: There are two best ways to cook it. One, do it stovetop with a skillet (cast-iron works best) over medium heat until it's browned on both sides. Or, you could cook on a cookie sheet (with sides, to catch the grease) in a 350-degree oven--it'll take around 15 minutes, maybe more or less depending on the thickness of the bacon and your personal taste. Do not cook in the microwave, or the Bacon Police will come and take your pork strips away, because you don't deserve them.

19. Storing it: You can store your bacon in Ziplocs or other airtight containers. It lasts in the fridge about two weeks, or in the freezer for about two months. Store either sliced or whole, it doesn't matter.

20. Wrapping it up: If you have any questions about how to make your own bacon, feel free to hit my blog (you're here right now) or drop me a line on Twitter: JenniSpinner.

Bonus post-Ignite tip: You can take this exact process, end to end, and smoke nearly any other kind of meat. Get fresh ham from your butcher to make homemade ham for Easter. Smoke your own Memphis-style ribs. Smoke your Thanksgiving turkey. You'll need to adjust cooking times, depending on the type, size and thickness of meat, but it'll work great.

An ode to the World's Best Food

2011-03-20T22:44:00.000-05:00

A little more than a week ago, I had an "Oh, shit!" moment when I realized I had 20 minutes until the deadline for the Baconfest Chicago 's poetry contest. I quickly whipped up a Shakespearean sonnet and submitted it. It didn't win (some bastard named Joel did), sadly. Well, not TOO sadly--while it's definitely not my best work, I am quite proud of myself for rhyming "Izard" with "tries hard." Anyway, here goes:

O BACON

O Bacon, thou art truly king of meat
Thy salted pork strips, all the world doth savor
We marvel at your taste whene’er we eat
No match is there to thy ass-kicking flavor

Bacon, you doth haunt our every thought
And your dreams are gorged with bacon when we sleep
Efforts to abstain would go for naught
For thy taste makes even vegans weep

Each Baconfester samples and then tries hard
To judge the best dish made with savory Nueske’s
We nosh cuisine by all-star chefs like Izard
While imbibing our Goose Island brewskies

No other meat is worthy of a fest
O Bacon, Bacon, thou art truly best

Nueske's cookoff finalist #6: Kick out the jams

2011-03-18T10:54:00.000-05:00

Nueske's cookoff finalist
Irene Rivera

The bacon-wrapped date is a classic bacony nosh. The combination of sweet dates and savory bacon, of mushy fruit and crunchy meat, is a nearly irresistible flavor treat. For her entry in the Nueske's Baconfest Chicago cookoff, Irene Rivera took this most fabulous of bacon snacks and elevated it to new levels of greatness by putting it in cookie form. Here, Ms. Rivera tells us about her Date and Bacon Jam Thumbprint Cookie recipe, and why she thinks bacon is the king of meats.

BDJ: How did you come up with this delicious idea?

Irene: I started with a list of both savory and sweet possibilities. There are definitely dishes that you automatically think bacon: bacon and eggs, BLT, loaded baked potato, etc... I wanted to come up with a dish that you normally wouldn't find bacon in, yet it makes sense. One of my husband's favorite appetizers to order at a tapas restaurant are the bacon wrapped dates. Bacon wrapped dates are a perfect example of sweet and salty, all food tastes better if you hit different taste buds. So after much contemplation I definitely wanted to make something sweet. The fact that your dish has to be completely assembled and you can only warm it up on site, also influenced my decision. Some of my ideas were eliminated because I knew it wouldn't hold up to transporting then reheating. Besides, who doesn't love cookies? I even adjusted the size in my second batch that I made for people who voted for me. They are the perfect two bite cookie, so you are insured to get a bite of the sticky bacon and date jam center.

BDJ: Why do you love bacon?

Irene: I love the salt and crunch. I prefer to bake my bacon on a cookie sheet with a rack. It makes for very crunchy bacon. I also love how bacon fat adds so much flavor. If you ever made a stuffing and sauteed your onion and celery in rendered bacon fat, then made the same recipe with just butter. You would feel deprived to eat the latter.

BDJ: What's your favorite way to eat bacon (besides in this recipe, of course)?

Irene Rivera's Date and Bacon Jam
Thumbprint Cookies

Irene: BLT with a fried egg, roasted tomato preferably. Answering this question is making me want to make one for breakfast tomorrow.

BDJ: Why should you win?

Irene: The competition is fierce. Without having tasted my competitors’ dishes, I am going to say I'd like to win if I deserve it. Seriously, I'm up against Joe's bacon schnitzel. I think the first time I saw the picture of his dish I had to wipe the drool from my mouth. My cookies are good; the cream cheese makes them delicate and creamy. The bacon and date jam is delicious, so much that I have a small container in my refrigerator of just the jam alone so I can spread it on toast.

BDJ: Anything to add?

Irene: Good luck to all my fellow competitors. I'm just excited to be part of this awesome event.

Nueske's cookoff finalist #5: Say cheese(cake)!

2011-03-17T10:17:00.000-05:00

Nueske's cookoff finalist
Tyler Hall: bacon is his
cup of tea.

If there's one thing we really love about the surge in bacon love over the past few years, it's the creativity. People are finding all sorts of new ways to cook bacon, flavors to pair with it, and places to boldly go where no bacon has gone before. In the case of Tyler Hall's potentially prizewinning entry in the Nueske's Amateur Bacon Cookoff at Baconfest Chicago, the unexpected combination of savory meat, sweet sugar, and earthy flowers crash together in a crazy yet delightful way. Let's take a peek inside the mind that came up with Lavendar Vanilla Caramel Candied Bacon Cheesecake...

BDJ: How did you come up with this delicious idea?

Tyler: Inspiration from Lady Gaga's meat dress...seriously. I came up with the idea to do a bacon cheesecake with a friend who is the king of cheesecake, Matt Pettiti. We ended up making five different cheesecakes: Mexican, Asian, Mae Ploy, Breakfast, and Lavender Vanilla. The Lavender Vanilla Caramel Candied Cheesecake won out because of the flavors that we couldn't stop eating.

BDJ: Why do you love bacon?

Tyler: Bacon, of course, makes absolutely everything better. There are very few things that a good pork belly can't make better. I even gave my brother a pork belly to smoke for the holidays this year. Having been to both Baconfest and the Pro Bacon cook-off last year I've learned a lot about the versatility of the product and the respect you should have for it. Still wondering how bacon isn't considered King of umami?

BDJ: What's your favorite way to eat bacon (besides in this recipe, of course)?

Tyler Hall's Lavender Vanilla Caramel Candied Bacon
Cheesecake.

Tyler: I don't think there is just one way. I think there are memories that I have when having bacon for the first time with my grandparents. I remember having Bacon Lettuce and Tomato sandwiches where I subbed the tomato with cheese. I also remember lots of bacon and eggs. Now I'm to the point where I'm putting bacon in Cheesecakes and really experimenting with bacon as a crisp fully cooked piece or a more manageable piece such as wrapped around a peach in a salad with goat cheese.

BDJ: Why should you win?

Tyler: I believe I should win so can help spread the idea of bacon as something more. I take things that don't seem like they should go together and make them work. To that end I hope to inspire others to make something unusual and take risks to make something great.

BDJ: Anything to add?

Good luck to the other Cylons and I can't wait to try your creations.

Nueske's cookoff finalist #4: All you need is loaf

2011-03-15T11:25:00.003-05:00

Nueske's cookoff finalist Elizabeth
Schuler has her eye on bacon.

When the paths of tradition and innovation intersect, great things can happen--especially when bacon also comes into play. That very well might be the case with Elizabeth Schuler's finalist entry into the Nueske's Amateur Cookoff at this year's Baconfest Chicago. Her recipe takes the humble meatloaf--a dish not normally known to induce thrills--and boosts its excitement factor up considerably with cumin, coriander...and, of course, bacon. And, if you dig this recipe, she's got more deliciousness up her sleeve--check out her blog My Communal Table for tons of other amazing dishes. Here, Ms. Schuler explains her inspiration, and her love for salted pork strips.

BDJ: How did you come up with this delicious idea?

Elizabeth: I love meatloaf, but I love cold meatloaf sandwiches as much. So I started to put things in a meatloaf that I loved to find in a terrine. Pistachios, etc. and then rolled completely in bacon. I can't wait to share it with all of you.

BDJ: Why do you love bacon?

Elizabeth: I love how a small piece of bacon can add so much flavor to a dish. I love how satisfying it feels to have bacon with eggs in the morning, but most of all I love the look on my small son's face when he is consuming bacon. He is sooo happy. It is food of love.

BDJ: What's your favorite way to eat bacon (besides in this recipe, of course)?

Elizabeth: Simply it is the BLT! Bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich!

Elizabeth Schuler's entry takes the humble meatloaf
and kicks it up several notches with spices and bacon.

BDJ: Why should you win?

Elizabeth: I am going to let my food do the talking. The best food should win.

BDJ: Anything to add?

Elizabeth: I am really excited to meet all the competitors and witness their creative dishes. I am really looking forward to experiencing all the inspiration that these world class chefs are going to present at the fest as well. It will be fun to chill with some bacon poetry and lots of cured meats.

Bacon Du Jour

Nueske's cookoff finalist #3: Nacho mama

2011-03-13T09:24:00.001-05:00

Monica Sehgal Sharma, creator of
tandoori bacon nachos.

If we had to pick our favorite non-bacony cuisine, it might be Indian food. We love the spices of dishes like chicken vindaloo, the savory goodness of samosas, and--if (God forbid) all bacon were to suddenly disappear from the planet--we might bestow the World's Perfect Food title about the fluffy, chewy taste treat known as naan. The only thing that could possibly improve the fantastic flavors of Indian food: bacon.

Well, Monica Sehgal Sharma--one of the finalists in the Nueske's Amateur Bacon Cookoff at Baconfest Chicago--has rectified the situation and married the two flavors in her finalist dish, tandoori bacon nachos. They use chicken skin instead of tortilla chips. Brilliant! Let's learn more about the genius and inspiration behind this tantalizing dish.

Monica's Indian-inspired tandoori bacon nachos.

BDJ: How did you come up with this delicious idea?

MSS: I came up with the idea of deconstructing tandoori chicken, a staple dish in my house....so replacing the chicken for bacon was an easy start, using the same marination methods for the bacon was trial and error, but I got it just right!

I wanted to create a one-bite amuse bouche that gives someone the experience of tandoori chicken. So the smoky tandoori bacon combined with the freshness of the tomatoes, red onion, and cilantro with the splash of lime juice makes the dish almost perfect, the crispy chicken skin chip is the base for this dish and the element that makes it perfect!

BDJ: Why do you love bacon?

MSS: Bacon is salty, sweet, spicy, and smoky, it takes whatever form you want it to and adds a dimension to any dish that no other protein provides....the best part is that it's cost effective, it enhances a dish and doesn't clean you out! A little goes a long way and using alot is always welcome, you just can't go wrong.

BDJ: What's your favorite way to eat bacon (besides in this recipe, of course)?

MSS: My fav way to eat bacon....hmm, that's tough, there's no bad way to eat bacon! But, I like bacon as its first use, for BREAKFAST! I love bacon that is braised in maple syrup or even just eating pancakes and bacon and letting the syrup run into the bacon...the sweetness and the saltiness MAKES FOR A GREAT COMBINATION.

BDJ: Why should you win?

MSS: I think I should win because I've created a dish that truly is different and original (what indian restaurant serves tandoori bacon? I have yet to find that place!). The dish also represents my abilities as a cook to balance flavors and texture and to create an experience in your mouth. I also show my creative and innovative side in using the chicken skin to make the perfect platform for my dish, which adds flavor and practicality to my dish. My creation really brings together how I think and feel about food, and as a cook, sharing who you are in the food you make is what makes it unforgettable.

BDJ: Anything to add?

MSS: I am really excited to show the world what I am about as a cook and as a person. I am ready to take myself to a new level personally and professionally and having this opportunity at Baconfest Chicago is just amazing! I get the chance to meet incredible chefs, talk to people that eat, sleep and live for food like I do, and most importantly, I get to share a piece of my world with all of you! Good luck to my fellow contestants, everyone's dishes look amazing!

Nueske's cookoff finalist #2: Beer+bacon=success!

2011-03-12T07:35:00.001-06:00

Nueske's Bacon Cookoff finalist Joe
Ruenwald. He's on the left, we think.

Greatness arises from many things--a hunger for fame, drive for success, a desire to help all mankind. In the case of Nueske's Amateur Bacon Cookoff Finalist Joe Ruenwald's bacon schnitzel, the creator drew upon the power of beer. Since many of BDJ's own mad bacon experiments are fueled by booze, we heartily approve of the source of his inspiration, and look forward to sampling it at Baconfest Chicago. Read on to find out about Joe's appreciation for good beer and great bacon.

Joe's Bacon Schnitzel draws upon a family recipe.

BDJ: How did you come up with this delicious idea?

Joe: First off, I set down some criteria for what I think a winning recipe would be.
1) Bacon is the main ingredient - not just sprinkled on top type of thing
2) It is a unique dish - never seen on a restaurant menu or a recipe website
3) It honors the rich heartiness (not heart healthy-ness) of bacon

My brainstorming from there went down the thought process of, what have I made for dinner that blows everyone away? Some of the other ideas I tested out were bacon eggrolls, bacon rangoon, buffalo bacon sandwich, and bacon brownies. None of these turned out bad, but none seemed like winners either. So I do what I always do when I need inspiration. I went to the fridge and I grabbed a bottle of my home brewed dunkelweizen. Before I could finish pouring it into a glass I realized bacon schnitzel is the answer. All that remained was to take my grandmother's schnitzel recipe, and rebuild it from the gravy down.

BDJ: Why do you love bacon?

Joe: Because it tastes great.

BDJ: What's your favorite way to eat bacon (besides in this recipe, of course)?

Joe: On toast with crunchy peanut butter.

BDJ: Why should you win?

Joe: I should win because I have crafted a dish that showcases all the wonderful properties of bacon while keeping bacon as the star of the show, and it is incredibly tasty as well.

BDJ: Anything to add?

Joe: Best of luck to the other bacon cylons out there.

Nueske's cookoff finalist #1: Bacon is HOT!

2011-03-11T11:15:00.002-06:00

Michi Trota slings bacon and spins fire. Aw, yeah!
Photo: Matt Porubcansky

Michi Trota's awesome flourless bacon and spiced chocolate torte recipe landed her one of the much-coveted finalist spots in the upcoming Nueske's Amateur Cookoff at Baconfest Chicago. When she's not playing with or eating with bacon, she's spinning fire monthly at Chicago's Full Moon Jams, which is pretty danged awesome. Here she shares some secrets and insights about her love for the World's Perfect Food.

BDJ: How did you come up with this delicious idea?
MT: I love desserts - as far as I'm concerned, they are the vital capstone to any meal. I don't care how great the appetizer or entree was, if the dessert isn't up to par, it's like going on an amazing date only to get a handshake and a "I'll call you sometime" at the end of the night.

I've been a big fan of the trend incorporating bacon into traditional sweets. The saltiness of bacon is a natural pairing with the richness of chocolate - I've had bacon with milk, semi-sweet and bittersweet dark chocolate and in my opinion, it pairs best with semi-sweet because there's enough of the sweet notes in the chocolate to balance the salt of the bacon without either being overwhelmed. So that was the basic idea behind the torte: balancing salt & sweet notes and also the crisp crunchiness of the bacon with the dense, velvety texture of the torte. The whiskey in the torte batter was a bit of a whim but it pairs well with both the chocolate and bacon.

I also LOVE spice with chocolate, and the smokiness of chipotle chili pepper and the slightly more sweet taste of ancho chili pepper seemed like great accents for both the bacon and chocolate, so I worked that into the ganache but not the torte. Maple with bacon seems like a foregone conclusion, so I worked a little bit of syrup into the caramel drizzle decorating the cake. The maple in the caramel also plays off the piece de resistance on the cake: bacon candied in maple syrup and a touch of brown sugar. I think the bacon candy is my favorite part about the cake. I had a friend who makes bacon candy by coating it in sugar and baking it, so the idea came from conversations with him about the best way to crisp the bacon without burning the glaze. It ended up being far easier to make than I thought and now that I know how to do it, it's DANGEROUS knowledge because that stuff is like crack. I have to make far more bacon candy than I need for the cake because it ends up becoming snack food.

BDJ: Why do you love bacon?

MT: Seriously? You need to ask me this? I'd have to counter with another question: "How can anyone NOT love bacon??" It's salty crispy magic in your mouth and works in both savory and sweet dishes with the right amount of creativity. Everyone should embrace the power of the Pork Side.

Michi Trota's flourless bacon and spiced chocolate torte.
Photo: Michi Trota

BDJ: What's your favorite way to eat bacon (besides in this recipe, of course)?

MT: A very difficult question. I do love grilled cheese with a very sharp cheddar, tart Honeycrisp apples & pepper bacon on sourdough; or cider bourbon-braised bacon (this recipe on Salon.com was fan-freaking-tastic so if you can get slab bacon, I highly recommend it!). For sweet, bacon & chocolate of course - the Vosges Mo' Bacon bars are delicious - although next I plan on experimenting with adding bacon hand-rolled chocolate truffles and creme brulees (hand torches and bacon? How can you go wrong?).

But I guess if it came down to it, eating a simple, perfectly crisp piece of bacon hot out of the oven would be my favorite.

BDJ: Why should you win?

MT: Obviously everyone who entered the contest loves bacon - I know that for me, it was a pretty significant amount of time and effort to make that cake and I can't imagine that any of the other entrants did any less. And I'm really very impressed by the creativity in many of the dishes, especially in my fellow final contestants. I think what it comes down to, though, is how good the dish is - taste, texture, presentation and how well it showcases bacon. So I'd say that I believe I should win because my dish hits all those checkmarks. Yes, there is spice and maple and chocolate, but those flavors don't overwhelm the bacon, they enhance it so that the bacon shines - literally. I took a picture of a piece of the torte on a sunny day with the light coming through the piece of bacon candy and it looks like stained glass (attached to the email). I just hope the judges agree with that assessment!

BDJ: Any last words?

MT: I'd like to say "Thank you" to everyone who voted for my dish because I wouldn't have made it in without those votes. Also, "Congratulations and good luck!" to the other Final Six. I can't wait to try their dishes. I'm especially intrigued by the Tandoori Bacon Nachos - crispy chicken skin "chips?" That's genius!

Nueske's Baconfest cookoff finalists announced!

2011-03-09T10:47:00.000-06:00

In advance of the much-anticipated second annual Baconfest Chicago event comes the announcement of the finalists in the Nueske's Amateur Cookoff competition. Apparently, the folks at BFC had such a hard time whittling down the awesome entries, they had to pick SIX entries, instead of the five they'd originally planned on. The culinary creations in the bunch are amazing--so much so, that BDJ Labs wanted to pick the brains of the kitchen geniuses behind the creations. Stay tuned over the next few days, when we'll be posting thoughts and inspirations from the finalists, and we'll see what makes them tick.

Bacon Academy basketball

2011-03-08T09:46:00.000-06:00

Sounds better than a quidditch game at Hogwarts, right?

Unfortunately, while Bacon Academy bears an ultracool, delicious-sounding name, it's a name and name only. There are no classes in curing pork, as far as we can tell. There is, however, a decent girl's basketball program, as this recent news headline demonstrates.

Bacon struggles in second half but advances to L semis with win vs. Berlin

Gluten-free bacon!

2011-03-07T13:43:00.000-06:00

Bad news: One of our own was recently diagnosed as a celiac--meaning, she can't have gluteny goods like bread, pasta, cookies and other delectables. It's amazing how many foods wheat and its various components sneak into. Uncle Ben's rice, for instance. You'd think it'd be safe, seeing as how the main--and, logic would dictate, only--ingredient is rice. Wheat's like Bobby Brady in the back seat on Greg's groovy date at the drive-in: getting in the way, unnecessary, and generally just effin' things up.

Good news: Bacon is GLUTEN-FREE!

Weird bacon pic

2011-03-06T13:05:00.000-06:00

You're welcome--or we're sorry, either way.

Incidentally, cooking bacon while naked? Never a good idea. NEVER.

Stop! Bacon thief! (or, Purloined sirloin)

2011-03-05T09:02:00.000-06:00

From the Chicago Tribune:

Around 1,500 pounds of meat stolen in central Iowa

MELBOURNE, Iowa — Around three-quarters of a ton of steak and other meat was stolen from a Melbourne meat company.

Barry Sedlacek (sed-LAH'-chek) owns Sedlacek's Wholesale Meat Co. He told the Marshalltown Times-Republican that the thief or thieves got in last weekend and took the meat, a scale and some cash.

The Marshall County Sheriff's Office estimates the loss at $1,900, but that didn't include the meat cost. Sedlacek says that adds several thousand more dollars to the total.

He says whoever took the beef and bacon has to sell it somewhere, so he's hoping for help from someone on the community who is offered a meat bargain.

Shakin' and bacon

2011-03-04T07:22:00.001-06:00

Almost as much as she loves bacon, Head BDJ Lab Tech Jenni S. enjoys shakin' her plump rump to some sweet, sweet grooves. Which is why she's very glad she's discovered the wonder that is Dance Dance Party Party--a few nights a week, a bunch of broads gather at a dance studio and get their groove on in the name of fun and fitness. No dudes, no drinking--just getting jiggy with it. Last night, she made her DJ debut, under the moniker "DJ Bacon Strippa." So sad you couldn't have been there--but if you read the lovely entry the nice ladies that run DDPP Chicago wrote about her, it's just like you're there. Click here for the playlist, and some more sweet bacon mashup pics.

"First rule of the farm, don't name your food!"

2011-03-03T11:20:00.001-06:00

Words of wisdom from Chicago native and chef extraordinaire Art Smith, which he handed down via tweet to Head BDJ Lab Tech Jenni S. He's a bacon guy and farm lover, so he would know. Plus, it just makes sense. Who'd want to munch on a plate of savory pork strips and exclaim, "Boy, Wilbur sure is tasty!"

Here's a pic of the adorable Chef Smith, with some random woman.

Bacon's magic pans out

2011-03-02T08:18:00.000-06:00

Macheesmo.com is a great site geared toward helping timid, amateur chefs become bolder about kitchen activity. The site recently featured a wonderful, magical tip about the healing powers of bacon--specifically, the power to help restore a cast-iron skillet to useful life.

First of all, if you don't have, or regularly use, a cast-iron skillet, you're missing out. Not only do these heavy-duty beauties make great murder weapons (heavy, solid, balanced--no skull can stand up to a good swing!), they're just about perfect cooking tools, because they retain heat and cook stuff evenly. However, they need tender loving care--neglect, overuse, washing with soap, and other things can dull a skillet's lovely black sheen. When that happens, it needs to be recharged, or "seasoned," to bring it back to its former glory. Scrub the rust away, and use bacon grease to revive it. Click here for the full details.

Bacon-eating champ? We're not impressed.

2011-03-01T09:13:00.000-06:00

Watch the below video and witness the World Bacon Eating Championship, which went down in St. Louis yesterday afternoon. The winner--charmingly named Dave "Coondog Dawg" O'Karma--wolfed down 40 rashers in the five-minute time frame. Frankly, we're not impressed--we've done that many strips in far less time. We don't even find the world record of 54 pieces in five minutes all that daunting. Look for BDJ lab techs to enter the world of competitive bacon eating soon.

Incidentally, the event was sponsored by Beggin' Strips; however, the strips consumed were real meat, not the faux-pork canine treats.

Get down with the thickness

2011-02-28T08:20:00.000-06:00

Paper-thin bacon is fine for some things--wrapping around a Cadbury Creme Egg, for instance--but if you're going for the simple, undeniable pleasure of straight-up bacon eating, thicker is almost always better. Those few extra millimeters give you a crispy outside, chewy inside, and all-around better flavor.

You can procure a package of Oscar Mayer's Super Thick Cut stuff (available at fine grocers everywhere!), but your best bet is to head to your local butcher or specialty-grocer meat counter and have them slice for you. The beauty at left was born at Gene's Sausage Shop in Chicago's Lincoln Square neighborhood. They smoke the lean, Danish-style bacon themselves and offer it up for $4.99/lb. (about what most grocery-store brands will run you, but with MUCH higher quality). Just ask the nice man in the paper hat to slice it about 1/3 of an inch, take them home, and bake them in the oven.

The only tradeoff with thick bacon: Patience. Your average thin-slice strip will take about 12-15 minutes when baked in a 350-degree oven. For thick slices, add about 10 minutes to that. The wait, however, is well worth it.

BACON'S BACK

2011-02-23T14:36:00.000-06:00

After a well-deserved break--during which plenty, but not quite enough, bacon was consumed--Bacon Du Jour will be returning on Monday, February 28, 2011, A.D. We apologize for the absence, but rather than make up some lame excuses, here are some cool ones (also made up):

"We went on vacation to a nude beach, after which we couldn't sit down in front of our computer for a very long time, because of the extremely painful sunburn on our buttocks."

"We got totally stoned on Bob Marley's birthday and, thanks to a severe case of the munchies, ate our power cord. In our defense, those things look WAY too much like black Twizzlers."

"We came down with the rockin' pneumonia, AND the boogie-woogie flu."

"After seeing a guy put ketchup on his hot dog at the mall food court, we were too traumatized to leave the house for several months." **

"We went to Gene's Sausage Shop to restock our Nueske's supply, when a pack of angry vegans followed us to our car, then beat us with bricks of extra-firm tofu."

Enough excuses--we'll see you next week.

** we're from Chicago.

Breakin' bacon: BACON PAIRINGS AT PADDY LONG'S

2010-10-14T13:37:00.000-05:00

We are still suffering from bacon hangovers thanks to the stellar BaconFest Chicago-sponsored bacon/beer pairing event at Paddy Long's last night. Our review will be up soon, we promise.

Now, to go find some hair of the dog...

Aside of bacon: Lady Gaga continues the meataphors

2010-09-21T13:04:00.000-05:00

A little over a week ago, little Steffi Germanotta (aka Lady Gaga) draped her flanks in flank steak and appeared on the MTV Video Music Awards stage to make a statement about the U.S. military's Don't Ask Don't Tell policy. What precisely that statement is, we're not sure--but we are pretty darned sure that she's against banning gays from serving openly in the military, and that she's pro-carnivore. Also, we're pretty sure that in this anti-DADT address, she's wearing Chicago Tribune columnist Mike Royko's glasses.

Rasher Review: SUBWAY B.L.T.

2010-09-21T09:29:00.000-05:00

Sometimes when you're longing for something, the universe steps in and gives you a sign. This evening, we found ourselves famished with no dinner plans, watching Where the Red Fern Grows on Encore Family (Dave Matthews played the dad--ergh) when a commercial for Subway's BLT popped up on screen. Piled to the heavens with succulent tomatoes, verdant lettuce and savory bacon, the universe spoke to us through a five-dollar beacon from above. So, we grabbed our money and schlepped to the discount-sandwich joint to procure our meals. I mean, who are we to argue with the universe?

It turns out, sometimes the universe is a cruel bastard. Look at the sandwich above. Now, look at the pathetic sub to the right. Sad. We counted seven strips of bacon, but man, that had to be the saddest collection of pork planks ever--so think they'd float away on a light breeze. We don't think we need to say how disappointing the eating experience actually was; the evidence of the bread overpowering the wussy meat slices is there in the frame. We'd have to order triple bacon to even taste it.

Now, please excuse us while we make dessert: bacon. What else?

BREAKIN' BACON: AMERICAN IDOL TWEETS BACON LOVE

2010-09-18T21:17:00.000-05:00

Good news, baconeers: Crystal Bowersox, the American Idol contestant that SHOULDA won (no offense, Lee) is one of us. Witness this tweet of a few hours ago:

I Can't Believe It's Not Bacon: HICKORY INCENSE

2010-09-17T06:00:00.001-05:00

If there's a smell anywhere near as enthralling as the aroma of frying bacon, it is the scent of pork being cured through the magical power of smoke. If you agree, do yourself a favor and drive--or fly, hitchhike, whatever you need to do--to a little town in central Wisconsin called Wittenberg. Despite a pretty teeny population (about 1,100 if everyone's home that day), there's a decent number of attractions to hold your interest. There are charming murals adoring scores of town buildings. Diane's Restaurant serves up some of the best hot java to ever fill a mug.

And, of course, there's Nueske's.

Nueske's is the mecca of cured meats. Bacon's the star attraction, to be sure, but there's also sausages, smoked turkey, and ham tempting enough to bring a vegan to his knees. You could lose hours on end wandering through the shop, marveling at the stunning array of meats and gourmet foodstuffs--and oh, the smell. Just wandering through for a 30-minute stretch is enough to infuse your clothes and hair with the rich, earthy scent of applewood smoke. We think Heaven's atmosphere is air pumped directly from the inside of the shop, it's that tantalizing.

Unfortunately, you can't just go to the household products aisle at Target and pick up a Glade Plug-In that smells like bacon. Oh, but wouldn't it be marvelous if you could turn the key in your front door and open it to be greeted by the tantalizing odor of wood-smoked bacon? That's what we were hoping for when we procured the insanely adorable little incense burner pictured here (procured from Albuquerque-based Inciensio de Santa Fe), and a ton of little bricks of natural hickory wood. We've been in love with this company for about a decade now. Instead of the dirty-hippie smell of the chemical-laden cheapo stick incense favored by stoned college kids, these incenses smell like pinion, cedar, juniper, mesquite and--of course--hickory. We logged onto the site and ordered a bigass box of hickory cones. We figured that if we were lucky, flaming those bad boys up would create a reasonable bacon smokehouse facsimile. If not: oh, well--we'd still enjoy the fireplace-like smell of burning wood.

When we inhaled the first wisps of smoke, we exhaled disappointment. The smell was lovely, to be sure, but not very evocative of a bacon smokehouse. But then, when the incense nubs burned down and the smoke cleared, a marvelous thing happened. The campfire smell morphed into the aroma of lingering hickory smoke--just like a smokehouse! Oh, happy occasion--we've discovered a way to have the smell of bacon in our lives 24/7, even when we haven't touched the oven in days!

We've been so delighted by the bacony smell permeating the BDJ barracks that we're going to be needing another box o' hickory bricks. We're thinking of ordering more burners for other rooms (wouldn't this steam engine look fabulous in the lavatory?) so the smell of bacony smoke never leaves our happy nostrils.

Rasher Review: BACON BURGER AT THE COUSINS

2010-09-16T11:07:00.000-05:00

BDJ Labs ventured out last night for dinner--this time, to The Cousins, a new restaurant not very far from our place--and of course, we had to order stuff with bacon on it. The menu said our beef-bacon sammich would be adorned with three strips o' bacon, so that's what we were expecting--instead, we got about SIX. Pay attention, Wendy's, because this is what a bacon burger SHOULD look like. Nice, thick bacon slices--full length, not the sad, thin, truncated rashers atop the Baconator--to create a 1/2-inch layer of pork crowning the beef patty. For a measly $9--not too terribly much more than a Wendy's Baconator value meal--we were treated to a hearty 1/2-lb. Angus burger with a satisfying amount of bacon, and a huge pile of steak fries on the side. It's not quite Kuma's, but it was pretty darned good for a small bit o' cash and a short walk from home. If you're on Chicago's North side, go support this humble little restaurant, and applaud them for giving such good bacon.

BACONEWS: Bacon and bloggers, sittin' in a tree...

2010-09-15T14:57:00.000-05:00

From msnbc.com: Trying to Create Online Buzz? Just Add Bacon

Sadly, this item doesn't contain much bacon, other than a mention of our beloved Bacon Hot Sauce. However, it does bring up a good topic: bloggers whoring themselves for free product. While we're frankly disgusted by bloggers that are willing to speak glowingly of products they don't necessarily believe in to get free stuff (we know of one mommy blogger who has a kitchen full of sparkling new appliances and didn't pay a dime for any of them), we are more than willing to review and spout fabulously compliment-laden copy about products we do support and enjoy. Hand-crafted bacon? Send it along--we'll eat it and, odds are, we'll love it. Then, we can write nice things. If you send us crap, we'll write that it's crap. In conclusion, if you stand behind your bacon product and believe that it's truly awesome, then you by all means should send it to us for trying and writing about--we would love to tell our readers about it and share the awesome with them.

Drop us a line here for more information.

Breakin' bacon: BACONFEST DINNER AT CHALKBOARD

2010-09-14T12:34:00.000-05:00

You're looking at the first course of the first satellite dinner hosted by Baconfest Chicago. Tickets for last night's event sold out lightning fast, so BFC had to schedule a second, which is tonight. In case you're one of those lucky people, I am loathe to reveal the entire menu or offer a detailed review for fear of ruining the surprise and delight that Gil Langois of Chalkboard has in store. If you didn't get a ticket, fear not--two more dinners are scheduled in the coming weeks.

I will tell you that my personal highlight last night was this opening dish--a plank of Nueske's bacon leaning against a perfectly roasted scallop, accompanied by preserved watermelon, vanilla mayo and candied Kalamata olives. Normally I hate olives (I refer to them as "the devil's eyeballs"), but dining companion Jenni Grover Prokopy and I agreed that they were tiny little nuggets of awesomeness. From the first sip of Prosecco, to the bacon-laden dessert, the entire menu was perfect--not a wrong note anywhere. We'll leave the details at that--no more spoilers.

Now that we're recovering from our bacon hangover, two things occur to us:
1. Bacon really is the king of all meats. It doesn't take a culinary genius of Langois' caliber to figure out that we've been severely limiting bacon by relegating it to the role of breakfast side dish and sandwich topping for so very long. This plucky little meat product has more tricks up its sleeve than the world's best magician.
2. Pork belly needs to be recognized as a perfectly acceptable cut of meat. I shouldn't have to schlep to a weekend farmer's market, settle for a frozen hunk at a butcher, or beg a hunk off a kindly local chef to cook it up. Fresh pork belly should be available EVERYWHERE, because it should be enjoyed by EVERYONE.

Test #304: Bacon + LAUGHING COW CHEESE

2010-09-12T20:39:00.000-05:00

The subject

What exactly is the reason the bovine on the package of Laughing Cow cheese is so tickled? We at BDJ Labs know why. "Ha ha!" the cow is thinking to herself. "I've conned people into buying these pasty white flavorless wedges of crap! Ha ha moo! They think it's CHEESE! Moo-wah-ha-ha!"

The Laughing Cow wedges shouldn't even be CALLED cheese--it's an insult to dairy products everywhere. We figured the horrid little triangles of blergh could only be improved by wrapping them with bacon and subjecting them to a couple minutes in a hot oven. So, that's exactly what we did...

The results
Nope. Still sucked.

The conclusion: Bacon + Laughing Cow "cheese" = udderly disgusting

Pretty pork: BACON IRON-ONS

2010-09-11T20:19:00.000-05:00

The Renegade Craft Fair is in Chicago this weekend, bringing a crap-ton of silkscreened t-shirts, handmade pillows, silkscreened t-shirts, knitted goods, felt dolls, silkscreened t-shirts, whimsical toys, and silkscreened t-shirts to the Windy City. Baconeers in attendance saw many pork-emblazoned items on display. Makes sense--creative minds are fueled by bacon, after all. Keen-eyed Chicago writer Maura Hernandez spotted these nifty bacon-strip iron-ons in the Diffraction Fiber booth. We at BDJ will definitely be ordering some of these babies--our lab coats could use some decoration (besides the grease spots, that is).

Have you seen any nifty handmade bacon goods? Alert us by dropping a line to BDJlabs@gmail.com.

BACONEWS: Bacon rocket flies to the moon!

2010-09-10T06:00:00.000-05:00

...well, not really. However, our friends at Rather Good made a noble, valiant attempt, and wrote a rockin' song about it to boot. Call it a bittersweet victory.

Test #303: Bacon + CEVAPCICI

2010-09-08T20:26:00.000-05:00

The subject

While Sarah Palin might disagree, we at BDJ labs are huge, huge fans of immigrants. I mean, if it weren't for all the people that swam, flew, rowed, ran, and otherwise made their way into this great land, the American diet would be a flat, featureless landscape of blergh. But, thanks to the various peoples that have come into this country, we have on the menu sushi, tacos, bratwurst, llapingachos, paella, gnocchi, pierogi, bibimbab, jibaritos, naan, and countless other taste wonders we chomp on regularly. One of our favorites in the meat area: cevapcici, or "chevaps." They're humble little Serbian sausages made of beef, lamb, pork, and a crap-ton of garlic. I mean, a lot. Usually served with a roasted-pepper sauce called avjar, cevapcici are meaty marvels that need to make their way into every Yankee's diet. We love them not quite as much as bacon, but close--so we brought the two together and baked the suckers.

By the by, this picture has nothing to do with cevapcici--it just popped up in the image search. While yet again we wonder what the frak is up with Google Images, we dig the image. Thanks, Ameeeee.

The result

Amazing. We're glad we pre-cooked the sausage a tad, otherwise the grease might have gone into the realm of overwhelming, but the end result ended up being just right. The garlic of the cevapcici didn't knock the bacon flavor out of the picture, which was nice--they balanced in a nice dance of spice and smoke and we ate every bite.

The conclusion: Bacon + cevapcici = brilliant

Breakin' bacon: BACON TAKEDOWN THIS WEEKEND

2010-09-08T08:08:00.000-05:00

Chicago is in for a pork-filled weekend--on Saturday, Lincoln Hall will play host to the first-ever Chicago Bacon Takedown, an event in which bacon-minded chefs face off against each other to determine which of their dishes is king. Ticketholders get to taste the contestants' wares and decide who deserves to triumph. For the story of how the Bacon Takedown came to be, click here and read the Chicago Tribune article. To get yourself some tickets to the blessed event, you're going to want to go to this here website.

Aside of bacon: The lady's gaga for meat!

2010-09-07T14:04:00.000-05:00

Stefani Germanotta (aka Lady Gaga) sure likes attention. With her beefy bikini cover shoot for Vogue Japan, she's gonna get it. It'd be even better if she'd donned strips of bacon, rather than flanking her flanks with flank steak, but oh, well.

Test #302: Bacon + LITTLE DONUTS

2010-09-06T08:02:00.000-05:00

The subject
The quality of food varies widely, depending on where it's made/sold, and who's making it. White Castle's crappy little burgers, for example, are light years apart from the beefy behemoths available at Kuma's Corner in Chicago. Similarly, there's virtually no comparison between the lovingly made pastries at Bleeding Heart Bakery, and the mass-made lumps at Dunkin Donuts, and (further down) the crusty, wax-coated nuggets of mediocrity available in sacks at the grocery store. We picked up a "trinity" pack (chocolate, powdered and cinnamon) donuts at our local discount retailer and wrapped them in bacon.

The result
This is the first time we did a three-part test--that is, wrapped each flavor in bacon separately, thinking maybe one flavor of donut might stand out. Not so much--each donut was as underwhelming as the next. We had high hopes for the chocolate, believing that (as is the case with many chocolate-covered or -laden test subject) the chocolate would evolve from mediocre to heavenly and velvety; instead, it just turned into melted brown wax. Ick. Cinnamon was probably the best, but that's like saying a kick in the shins is preferable to a boot in the groin--neither would be the bestest option. In the case of these donuts, we recommending leaving the ""pastries"" on the shelf and saving the bacon for more worthy wrapping recipients.

The conclusion: Bacon + little donuts = fair to middlin'

BACONEWS: Battle over beer 'n bacon

2010-09-05T15:01:00.000-05:00

from CNN.com:

New skirmish in battle over beer and bacon

From CNN deputy political director Paul Steinhauser

The back-and-forth over a campaign ad Rep. Michele Bachmann recently released has become campaign fodder for both Bachmann and her opponent, State Senator Tarryl Clark.

(CNN) - Call it the food fight that won't end.

The Democrat challenging Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann in Minnesota's sixth congressional district is headed to the state fair Thursday. No surprise there: people from across the state make an annual trek to the state fair, which runs through Labor Day.

But State Senator Tarryl Clark's visit comes just days after the Bachmann campaign went up with a television commercial which targets her Democratic challenger for voting to raise taxes on corn dogs, deep fried bacon and beer, popular cuisine at just about any state fair in the Midwest. And both candidates are using a back-and-forth over the ad for their own campaign fundraising.

"It's state fair time and you don't want to hear about politics," says a character in the ad named Jim the Election Guy. "But while you're at the fair, you should know that Tarryl Clark here voted to raise taxes on your corn dog, and your deep fried bacon, and your beer. So if you see Tarryl Clark, while you're at the fair, just ask her: What's up with voting to tax my beer."

The Clark campaign immediately fired back.

"With no record of accomplishment to run on, Michele Bachmann is back on the air with yet another attack ad," said Clark campaign manager Zach Rodvold in a statement. "Contrary to Bachmann's claims – Tarryl consistently fights to hold the line on taxes for over 95 percent of Minnesotans, and voted for deep cuts to the state budget totaling 10 percent in the last two years alone. Unlike Michele Bachmann, Tarryl voted for balanced budgets each of the last four years."

The Clark campaign is now fundraising off the ad.

"Help us fight back against Bachmann's brand of politics – make a contribution today!" says an email to supporters.

The email also claims that the Bachmann attack over raising taxes on corn dogs, deep fried bacon and beer doesn't make sense because "it was the people of Minnesota who voted to increase the sales tax – in order to fund land conservation and clean water."

Bachmann, a two term congresswoman who is a favorite of many conservatives and Tea Party activists, is also fundraising off the commercial.

"She wants to raise taxes on state fair food like corn dogs and beer! It's facts like this that make it crystal clear: we can't afford to allow Tarryl Clark and Nancy Pelosi to defeat me," says Bachmann in an email to supporters.

The Bachmann commercial also apparently included unauthorized state fair logos, which have since been replaced.

Happy International Bacon Day!

2010-09-04T08:00:00.001-05:00

International Bacon Day is our Christmas, our Thanksgiving, and our Super Bowl all rolled into one. This is the day upon which people all over the globe celebrate the best food in the history of eating things by consuming mass quantities of salted pork strips. However you commemorate this joyous occasion, we encourage you to send in your stories and share photos of your IBD bacon-alia. You don't have to go batshit bacon crazy by strapping slabs to your feet like this fine lass (click here for the full story of her crazy bacon footwear), but whatever you do, we want to know. Send us the goods at BDJLabs@gmail.com and we'll share with the rest of our BDJ Baconeers.

Rasher Review: CHICKEN BACON DIJON HOT POCKETS

2010-09-03T11:14:00.000-05:00

The product
Hot Pockets have a weird power over many staffers at BaconDuJour. They're not very flavorful, or nutritious, or satisfying, but they keep showing up in the lab freezer. Maybe we're lured in by the convenience (3 minutes in the microwave and boom! nuclear-hot sammich), the price (about a buck per pocket makes for a cheap lunch), but really, we think it's the space-age novelty of the crisper sleeves that turn us on.

Pocket appeal recently increased tenfold when we saw a new bacony flavor in the freezer case: Chicken Bacon Dijon. Look at that picture--sizeable hunks of bacon poking out from the nuggets of chicken, cheesy-dijony sauce, and deletably seasoned crust, who could resist? We ignored the lie put forth by the "Lean Pockets" label (8 g of fat? In one dinky sammich? Uh, no) and purchased enough of these Pockets to go around the lab. Eagerly we sleeved the Pockets, nuked the sumbitches and after letting the sandwiches rest so the filling could cool down from the molten-lava stage, and cut into them.

The results

We sliced the first test sandwich in half and took this picture. Do you see any bacon? We didn't see any bacon--not without poking around in the goo, anyway, and even then it was just a few sad little flecks of the stuff. Nice false advertising, Hot Pockets Corporation. Then, biting in didn't provide much relief--we detected a hint of bacon flavor, but that was it. Wah-wah.

The verdict:
Move along. No bacon to see here.

Breakin' Bacon: BACON-CRAZY DINNER IN CHICAGO

2010-09-02T07:39:00.001-05:00

If you missed Baconfest Chicago in April, you were deprived of a day-long celebration of salted-pork bacchanalia. Bacon-centric chefs from all over offered up mind-blowing appetizers, entrees, salads, desserts and even drinks loaded up with bacon. The hundreds of people that had flocked to the Stan Mansion in Chi's Logan Square hood woke up the next morning with bacon hangovers (although that didn't stop some BDJ staff from brunching the next door and ordering more bacon). As soon as the hickory and applewood smoke cleared, BFC organizers were thinking about their next big move.

"We'd been talking since April about smaller events to help feature chefs and restaurants that were doing interesting stuff with bacon," says Seth Zurer, one of the masterminds behind BFC. "It took a little time to get the ball rolling, but about a month ago we started chatting with out chefs to see who might want to host."

While Chicago is loaded with chefs that make good use of bacon, Gil Langlois at the world-class Chalkboard eatery is one of the few that really, truly, gets bacon, so his joint was a natural choice for the first BFC dinner. On Sept. 13 and 14, he'll be offering up a special bacon-crazy menu featuring Nueske's bacon, cocktails with Templeton Rye hootch, and other treats to folks gathered to celebrate the glory that is the planet's best food.

"Gil is doing a lot of wild flavor combos that will really push the edges of what we think of as natural accompaniments to bacon," says Zurer, adding that diners can expect wonders like bacon bread pudding and pickled bacon lollipops.

We can't wait. While tickets are sold out to the 9/13 dinner (at which BDJ Labs staff will be in attendance), there's still a little bit of room at the second on 9/14. Click here to grab yours.

Test: #301: Bacon and SWISS ROLLS

2010-09-01T06:00:00.000-05:00

The subject

The best things in life aren't always free. Sometimes, they're just really, really cheap.

Take Little Debbie's super-addictive, crackalicious snack cakes. Here it is 2010, and you can still purchase an ENTIRE box (between six to 12 items, usually) of the Tiny Temptress of Taste Treats' morsels for less than two bucks. Great news if you're a budget-minded mom packing desserts into your offspring's lunch boxes, or a hippie who's spent all his food money for the week on a Phish ticket but still desperately requires a palliative for his raging munchies.

Happily, this low price point also is perfect for your loyal BDJ Lab Techs, because after purchasing a box of Diminutive Deborah's Swiss rolls for today's mad bacon experiment, we still had plenty of dough left over to procure--what else?--more bacon (priorities, people). We wrapped some of that precious bacon around some Swiss rolls and baked those fatty mofos right up. Here's how it went...

The result

Not much to look at--the finished result closely resembles a bacon-ensconced Schnauzer turd--but man oh man, are looks in this case deceiving. While Swiss rolls were never our favorite LD delicacy (BDJ staffers are split between the fudge brownies and the nutty bars), we fell ass-over-teakettle in love with the bacon-wrapped roll. The dry cake and waxy coating morphed into a velvety chocogasm of sweet, gooey bacony heaven. Were the transmographied snack cakes not so insanely rich and weighty--and were we not relatively short on test bacon for the week--we might have wrapped up the entire box o' rolls and gone batshit bacon crazy. This is definitely a bacon trick worth pulling out for your next bacon-themed get-together.

The conclusion: Bacon + Little Debbie's Swiss roll = snackeriffic!

The time is nigh...

2010-08-31T14:00:00.000-05:00

...but not quite here. While you're counting down the minutes until BaconDuJour officially relaunches, you can enjoy this classic BDJ gem from RatherGood.com: HOVER BACON!

O Happy Day

2010-08-31T06:56:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow is September 1. Normally that wouldn't be such an exciting day, unless you get your ya-yas out by flipping the calendar page (if you do, god bless you for being so easily entertained).

This September 1, though, is especially momentous, for it is the day upon which BaconDuJour makes its triumphant return! We'll be relaunching BDJ with more of our infamous mad bacon experiments, more interviews with salted-pork enthusiasts, more tantalizing recipes, art, jokes, anecdotes, breaking news--each item chock full of salty, savory, smoky BACON.

We'd also like more of you in BDJ. We don't plan on wrapping you in bacon (unless you maybe ask real nice), but the lab techs at BDJ would like to hear from you if you have:

ideas for crazy bacon experiments
amazing bacony recipes
photos of your own bacon creations
pictorial record of making your own bacon
fantastic bacon dishes you've eaten at a restaurant
any other bacony thoughts

Drop us a line at BDJlabs@gmail.com. We'd love to hear from you, baconeers.

Flying at you: BDJ RETURNS IN SEPTEMBER!

2010-08-28T00:15:00.000-05:00

It's a tragic fact of adulthood, but sometimes you have to set aside the things you love to do to make way for obligations. In the case of BDJ, the lab techs had to take care of business literally. We loved writing about and eating tasty salted pork strips every day, but two things stood in the way:
1. Bacon costs money, and those government subsidies that would cover our bacon never did come through.
2. While eating bacon is its own reward, it's not financially rewarding--and bills don't pay themselves.

So, with sad faces and greasy fingers, the BDJ Labs team moved into hiatus, which let us attend to paying work, family obligations, travel, and other duties. Funny thing, though: While the savory scent of bacon faded from our lives, it never left our minds or hearts. Even funnier, our fans really missed it. Every day since we set aside the pork bellies, we've heard from friends and fellow aficionados, "Hey, when are you bringing back that goofy bacon blog?"

That's why Sept. 1, you'll be seeing BDJ make a comeback, bigger and better than before. Lots of bacon tasting, recipes, news, interviews with bacon-minded folk, etc. We're already hard at work coming up with great new stuff to share with you, our fellow carnivores. If we have to, we'll work a little late or early on all the other responsibilities in our lives, but we've come to realize that bacon is just one more thing we can't do without. We love it, and we're glad you do, too.

See you in September.

The Mother of All Cupcake Books. Buy it. Now.

2010-05-28T16:05:00.000-05:00

BDJ rarely posts about the same thing two times in a row, but this here cupcake tome is worth repeating ourselves for. You'll remember we posted a pic and a blurb about Who You Callin Cupcake?, the just-published collection of recipes by Michelle and Vinny Garcia, the folks at Chicago's Bleeding Heart Bakery. Now, we've had a chance to peruse the publication and share our thoughts. Our one-word review would probably be "fabulous" or something similarly glowing, because this cookbook kicks holy ass, but you probably need a few more words to convince yourself. Here's a few:

First of all, don't be surprised by this book's compact size. There are a whopping 75 recipes in this baby, each more tantalizing than the next. You could make a recipe every weekend, and then one on every major holiday, and still not make it through the damned thing.

Second, if you've stopped in and sampled the wares at Bleeding Heart, you're probably a fan and might even have a special favorite among the 'cakes (ours, naturally, is the choc/PB/bacon number). If that's the case, you'll be thrilled to learn that all the BHB masterpieces--from the ones on the menu every day, to the specialty flavors the bakery rotates--are listed in here. EVERY. SINGLE. ONE.

Third: Praises be, the recipes are simple, straightforward, and easy to follow, so even a novice in the kitchen has a chance at creating masterpieces of his/her own. Further helping the newbies, the authors offer tips and tricks to help you avoid kitchen mishaps (i.e. avoid overmixing the vegan cupcake batter). Head BDJ Lab Tech Jenni S appreciates this because she completely sucks at making cakes and can use all the expert advice she can get her hands on.

Fourth: Vegan cupcakes! Just because your diet is cruelty-free doesn't mean it has to be flavor-free, too--and these recipes prove it. Also helpful to have if you have vegan buddies (and who doesn't these days), so they don't get left out of any cakey occasions (birthdays, weddings, bat mitzvahs, divorces, haircuts--cake's awesome for any occasion, really).

Fifth: Even if you're a total klutz in the kitchen, never bake a thing, and basically just use your home oven to store the pans that you also never use, you'd be wise to buy this book just for the photography. Bill Lambert's a seasoned food photog, and his shots definitely do the cupcakes justice--you'll want to lick the pages (don't--they just taste like paper). Incidentally, Mr. Lambert also shoots for ThisIsWhyYourFat.com, one of our favorite food sites, so the dude knows how to photograph the food porn.

I'm going to stop writing so you can stop reading and get yourself a copy right now. If it's before 7pm and not Monday, you can go to the bakery at the corner of Damen and Belmont and get a copy. Or, Amazon. Or, fine booksellers everywhere. You can't have this copy, though. Sorry.

Dandy candy; Cupcake cookbook

2010-05-24T15:30:00.000-05:00

The Sweets and Snacks Expo launches tomorrow. We at BDJ LOVE our candy and snacky morsels almost as much as we worship bacon (almost) and starting tomorrow morning, most of Chicago's behemoth McCormick Place expo center will be wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling, asses-to-elbows with noshes, both sugary and savory. Not much bacon--but there is if you look. We'll come back with plenty (trying not to eat it all, and probably failing). When we return, we'll wrap a bunch of it in bacon, hopefully making up for the fact that we've been slackasses about updating lately, about which we feel horrible.

This picture has nothing to do with candy, except maybe candy is delicious, just like Bleeding Heart Bakery's treats are delicious, and this here is Michelle the grand poobah of BHB, and she's sweet/zingy like a Sour Patch kid, or something. Anyway, she has a new book that you should run out and buy so you can make yourself some awesome cupcakes at home. They won't be as good as hers, but then again, not everyone that picks up a baseball bat is Babe Flippin' Ruth, either. Who You Callin' Cupcake? available at fine booksellers everywhere, and maybe a few less-fine ones. Just buy it, okay? Gawd.

BREAKIN' BACON: Pork-scented tweets

2010-05-04T10:06:00.000-05:00

Bacon is a favorite subject among the citizens of the social media site Twitter.com. BDJ Labs credits twitizens for spreading the word about our bacon-positive mission far and wide and making the blog the hugantic success that it is today. Why, just this morning, within the span of only a few minutes, thousands of people sent out bacon-related tweets to their followers. Here are some of the highlights.

from BlackanesBarbie: @BJdaBirdman @AssoCartel OK ITS A DEAL!!! I WANT BACON LOTS OF BACON COOKED SOFT ANND SOME SCRAMBLED EGGS LMAO OH YEAH AN ORANGE JUICE

from DulceCalor: @ChicoFC When don't you need a bacon fix? I mean, seriously. @tuscanfoodie

from Sunni_Delight: The way to @MrAndIthankYou 's heart is wit a plate of bacon lol

from Alice Bryant: i just watched a video about bacon weaving instead of doing revision

from iHottys: Gratuitous Food Porn: Dram Shop Bacon Cheeseburger in Park Slope ...: Lettuce, tomato, chopped onion, dill pickle ... http://bit.ly/adl02a

from FearOfCode: @importantshock bacon being amazing is merely a special case of pork as a whole being very underappreciated.

from Julzzzzz: "Jake... Put down the bacon." "NOOOoooOOOOoooOOoOooOoaaHHAaahHhuhHHhHh!" "oh.my.god."

Test #208: Bacon and FROZEN FRUIT

2010-05-03T09:13:00.000-05:00

The subject

In a fit of good intentions, the folks at BDJ Labs decided to make a conscious effort to eat better--ironic, considering the cholesterol fest that is our bacon-scented existence. Outside of salted pork, though, we vowed to stock our pantry with wholesome stuff--fiber-filled bread, lean meats, vegetables, and fruits. This included smoothies, so we purchased plain yogurt, and frozen fruits to blend in 'em.

Turns out the big-ass bag of frozen fruit we purchased contains diamond-hard nuggets of pineapple, berries, melon and the like, which our non-industrial blender can't handle. Balls. So, we're stuck with a bag of fruit that we can't eat--unless we thaw them, which just leads to a pile of flavorless mush. Not wanting to chalk it up as a total loss, we figured we'd wrap a few chunks in bacon and see if that led to anything positive.

The results
Nope. Each nugget of fruit just totally gave up on life--took on a wee bit of bacon flavor, but the consistency was all blegh. The pieces got all watery and, depending on the size, some even were still borderline cold in the middle. Not a pleasant eating experience at all.

The conclusion: Bacon + frozen fruit = super meh.

Bacon funnel cakes: a Berry good idea

2010-04-12T20:49:00.000-05:00

Funnel cakes are a favorite snack food of American fair-goers and amusement park attendees. Delicious as they are, though, they could always be improved with tasty toppings...but which toppings? The people at Knott's Berry Farm put the question to the people, via Twitter, to determine which funnel cake adornments would please them most. The people came back with a resounding, unified answer:

"With chocolate, and bacon."

The sweet/savory treat--fried, drizzled with chocolate syrup, and sprinkled liberally with chopped bacon--was soon added to the KBF menu. The dish was supposed to be a temporary addition, but it soon proved so popular that its status was changed from temp treat to Special Guest Star for Life. Kind of like Heather Locklear was on Melrose Place. If you have a KBT ticket and an extra $8 in your pocket, you, too, can have a chocolate bacon funnel cake to munch on.

Read the whole heartwarming story right here, kids.

Baconfest: A day in bacon-smeared pictures

2010-04-11T21:43:00.000-05:00

Head Lab Tech Jenni S. was fortunate enough to attend yesterday's astoundingly successful Baconfest Chicago event. After sleeping off her bacon hangover, she's finally made it to her laptop. Here's her recap of the day, in words and photos (which look blurry thanks to her getting the lens all smeared with bacon grease--dumbass).

Words can hardly describe how much fun yesterday's Baconfest went. The joint was full from floor to ceiling with the smell of bacon, and crowded with bacon-loving folk high on the aroma. I could write an entire novel about everything I loved--from the Pabst and Bakon Vodka at the bar, to the gorgeous Stan Mansion that housed the whole thing. However, I'm just going to share a few thoughts and a couple blurry pics--try not to drool on your laptop as you read--on my favoritest parts.

The vendors
Bacon-friendly stores and eateries from across this great land of ours toted their wares to the event to treat attendees to some samples, and to provide baconeers the chance to leave the event with more than bacon in their bellies. Our favorites included:

Bleeding Heart Bakery: Chicago's best and bacon-friendliest purveyor of baked goods was one of Baconfest Chicago's most generous sponsors. I had the pleasure of hanging out with owner Michelle, and her leading sugarslingers Erica and Dan, for a bit during the day, and sampled a ton (well, not literally, but close) of their goods. My favorite: the chocolate-covered bacon. Better than others because they use Nueske's, and because they dip it halfway, rather than cover, in chocolate for a more balanced bite.

Bacon Salt: My love for Justin and Dave's extensive line of bacon-flavored goods is no secret. At Baconfest Chicago, I not only got to taste some of their newest products (including Bacon Pop microwave popcorn and the Bacon Ranch dip), I also got to meet and hang out with the insanely cool Dave (Justin had to stay back at the Bacon Salt HQ to hold down the fort). Hope we get to cross paths again, and not just because he might give me more Baconnaise (yum).

Soggy Paws: Why would a dog wash set up shop at a bacon event? Because the staff at this Uptown establishment love bacon almost as they love pampering pooches and, as such, they carry a huge range of bacony items for pet lovers to treat their canines with. They have pig ears and pig hooves (both of which Otto and Willie would love to sink their teeth in right now), but they also have adorable/awesome piggy toys. Our personal favorite: the super-tough portly rubber pig that smells exactly like bacon. They also carry superhealthy foods that contain pork--they look so good that you might be tempt to open a can and dig in.

Nueske's: I'm not the only person that thinks this Wisconsin company is the indisputable king of all baconmakers--an astonishing number of chefs in the Baconfest cookoff relied on the brand for their culinary masterpieces. Nueske's team members Megan and Thomas loaded up the baconmobile and made the trek all the way from Wittenburg to share the company's prizewinning pork with event attendees. Confession: I visited the sample table about five times. I definitely need to make my annual pilgrimage to their shop north of the Cheddar Curtain more often, so I can replenish my staff of their applewood-smoked stuff.

Das Foods: Katie Das' Man Bait maple-bacon lollipops are legendary. They were a hit at the National Confectioners Association show. While I managed to snag an entire bag of delicious candies from the lovely and gracious owner, I didn't manage to snag a decent picture. Whoops.

Wheel! Of! PORK!

I'm a sucker for trivia, so I was to thrilled to see the Illinois Pork Producers (another one of Baconfest Chicago's awesome sponsors) with their Wheel! Of! PORK! The group didn't much need to push its pork-positive message to the attendees--hello? we live and breathe pork, so we're totally down--but it was a blast spinning the wheel, learning about the hardworking men and women of the Other White Meat industry, and taking home I Dig Pig t-shirts and other goods. In addition, the group spread the word of its efforts to combat hunger in the state--especially important in this nasty economy.

The eats
The spread was eye-opening--I'm a lover of bacon and I've gotten pretty creative with the stuff, but my mind was completely blown by the staggering array of fanciful dishes. There was not a single loser in the bunch--any and all of the bites I enjoyed and would order off their menus in a second--so it's painfully difficult to pick favorites, but there were a few standouts:

The Signature Room: Chef Patrick Sheerin served up a pastrami-style hunk of pork belly, topped with kimchee coleslaw and crispy rye. The sizeable hunk of bacon on the plate (tasting portion? it was practically a meal in itself) was just about the most beautiful thing I've ever seen--thick, crispy on the edges and soft enough inside it practically melted. I couldn't help myself from going back not just for seconds, but for thirds.

Socca: I've passed by this Lakeview restaurant dozens, if not hundreds, of times. The next time I'm in that neighborhood, I will not be going past, but walking right in and sitting down. Chef Roger Herring (best culinary name ever, right?) served up triple-bacon veal meatballs and asparagus with a lemon-thyme bacon sugo. I wish I could cook meatballs this flavorful and perfectly seasoned, but I'll just leave it to pros like Roger--who in addition to being insanely talented, could not be a nicer guy.

Gary Wiviott: Many people claim to be BBQ experts (suck it, Flay), but this man actually knows his shit. He's the author of Low & Slow, one of the bestest tomes on the subject of thrilling with your grilling, and he presented on the subject at Baconfest. He wasn't cooking up enough of the demo food to share with everyone, but I was in the right place at the right time and got to sample one of his famous "dragon turds"--a jalapeno stuffed with spicy sausage and wrapped in bacon. I will be duplicating that magical dish soon, believe me.

Amateur Hour: Not all the chefs at Baconfest Chicago were pros--although the five contestants in the amateur bacon cookoff (sponsored by Nueske's) are skilled in their own right. Tina Bennett took home top honors with her Bacon Strip Cookies, a wondrous shortbread concoction loaded with bacony goodness--and again, while there wasn't enough for the hundreds of attendees, I was hanging with the Bleeding Heart crew when she came through with her award and some extra tidbits.

Organizers Seth, Andre and Michael should be super proud of themselves for putting together such a letter-perfect event. And you should do everything in your power to get to Baconfest Chicago 2011. See you there, baconeers.

BaconFest Chicago: HUGE success!

2010-04-11T12:45:00.000-05:00

The team of BDJ Labs is currently nursing a bacon hangover, after an eight-hour day of buying, tasting, talking, and celebrating bacon. Later today, we'll share with you a bit of all the glorious bacon shenanigans you missed. In the meantime, please enjoy this picture of BDJ's Head Lab tech sporting the infamous Bacon Salt strip suit.

BaconFest Chicago is TOMORROW! SQUEEEE!

2010-04-09T11:37:00.000-05:00

If the citizens of Chicago sometime tomorrow realize that the air of their fair city suddenly smells like pork and applewood smoke, these three guys are the reason why.

Bacon worshipers Andre Vonbaconvitch (left), Seth Zurer (middle) and Michael Griggs are the fellas bringing BaconFest Chicago to reality. After months of hard work assembling chefs, vendors, and sponsors--and after decades of cultivating a love for salted pork strips--their efforts will pay off tomorrow when the doors on the festival open at the historic Stan Mansion in Chicago's Lincoln Square neighborhood.

"It's been a long time coming, with a lot of ups and downs," says Zurer. "We're tickled that the day is finally here."

So are we. Even the most die-hard bacon fanatics might end up with bacon hangovers after the event. There'll be bacon tastings from some of the most distinguished bacon-minded chefs in the country. Bacon artisans like Nueske's will be hawking their wares. Bacony edibles/drinkables like Bakon Vodka's infamous libation and Das Foods' Man-Bait maple-bacon candies will be on hand. Many are looking forward to the amateur bacon cookoff, with dishes from bacon-scallop gyoza to a BLT dog vying for the prize. There's so much stuff that not even the organizers can say what they're most looking forward to.

"I'm excited for the moment right before we open the doors," says Zurer. "I'll poke my head out and see what i can only assume will be a seething horde of excited-beyond-belief bacon lovers getting ready for their encounters with bacon greatness: checking their hair, smoothing their eyebrows, shpritzing some Binaca....

"Then I'm excited to see those same people at the end of the shift, shuffling out, goodie bags full of bacon booty, waddling a little from all the bacon they ate, smelling as if they'd been cured and smoked themselves, smiling deliriously in that pre-nap bacon euphoria."

Seriously, we at Bacon Du Jour could not be more excited. If you weren't lucky enough to get tickets, it's all right--cook up a plateful of Nueske's finest on Sunday morning and log onto BDJ for a BaconFest Chicago wrapup.

Bacon hacks

2010-04-08T08:34:00.000-05:00

"Hacking" isn't just for computers--anytime someone gets a hankering to alter a sign, billboard, placard or other public message by adding their own twisted bent on it. Sometimes, those hackers turn their thoughts to bacon:

Have you seen any bacon hacks? Perpetrated your own? If so, please send 'em along to the Head Lab Tech at BDJLabs_AT gmail_DOT com.

Bacon Bad: Nightline report on bacon has no sizzle

2010-04-07T13:13:00.000-05:00

I guess Nightline gets points for trying, but not many, because they didn't try to hard in their report on the bacon craze. One, they're very, very late in jumping on the bandwagon. Two, no one in the bacon "community" knows who this jackass is. Three, it features very little in the way of information--nothing about restaurants featuring bacon, no discussion with bacon makers, nada about events like BaconFest Chicago. Four, they disparage the fabulous bacon products from Archie McPhee, and we just can't tolerate that. We could go on, but we'll just let you watch this POS clip and judge for yourselves. Because Hulu's embed feature is totally frakked, you're going to have to click here to peep that mess.

Happy Birthday, Twinkie!

2010-04-06T13:06:00.000-05:00

Today marks the 80th birthday of one of America's finest snack foods. Sure, they have a chemical makeup that enables them to survive decades on the shelf, and possibly endure a nuclear holocaust, but still--hard to resist the spongey sponge cake and the insanely sweet creme inside. The Twinkie was created way back in 1930 in Chicago, our hometown. Much has changed about the country since then--desegregation, television, computers, and whatnot--but our beloved artery clogger remains constant.

The Twinkie was one of the firsts bacon tests we recorded on BDJ--click here for a trip in the Wayback Machine.

Test #207: Bacon and PAPAYA

2010-04-06T11:00:00.000-05:00

The subject

While American palettes are becoming ever more diverse, there's still sadly millions of people who don't venture outside a few dozen varieties of food or veggies at their local produce purveyor. Mango, papaya, pomegranate--these fairly common fruits are still just weird candy flavors to most Yankees. Sad--not only are these sweet treasures insanely delicious, they're also EVERYWHERE. You can find mango even at the most whitebread of supermarkets, and if you're willing to go to just a tiny bit of trouble, you can partake of the wonder that is a fresh papaya--which is what we at BDJ Labs did for our recent test. We broke into a succulent fruit and went crazy, but before the papaya was gone, we wrapped a few pieces in bacon.

The results
Yummy--the papaya didn't get too terribly squishy, and only took on a little baconness, so the taste bit remained complex and didn't turn into a homogenous blob. Still, we think papaya is just fine on its own--not many things are great with bacon and even better solo. This is one of them.

The conclusion: Bacon + papaya = fabuloso

BDJ Under Construction

2010-04-05T08:27:00.000-05:00

Bacon Du Jour is going under a facelift. If we were a fancy-ass big company, or had any Web budget whatsoever, we'd take hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars and pour those resources into crafting a stunningly beautiful, technologically genius piece of blogging art, launching the facelifted site with much fanfare. However, because we have no skillz and prefer to spend our money on bacon procurement, you're going to see gradual, less-than-awe-inspiring changes over the next few weeks. The design is part of it (see the banner--we're still working on it), but there's WAY more in the features/programming department, which we're more excited about than the superficial looky-look stuff:

MORE mad bacon experiments
EXCITING bacon-themed videos and vlogs
THRILLING stories about bacon and the people that love it
TANTALIZING bacon recipes from around the globe
INSPIRING stories from baconeers

Thank you for reading. We love you. No, really--we mean it.

BREAKIN' BACON: Bacon Baby bacon-flavored formula

2010-04-01T17:31:00.000-05:00

The genius-pants guys at Bacon Salt have done it again--this time, a nutritious, delicious way to indoctrinate your recently-birthed spawn into the brother(or sister)hood of salted-pork appreciation. You might be tempted to hit the bottle yourself, just so you, too, can enjoy the sumptuous bacony goodness of this life-giving nectar.

If you'd like to get your little tyke sucking down bacon-flavored formula, you'd better act quickly. I hear from Bacon Salt Headquarters that supplies are extremely limited. If you love your baby, you'll waste not another second and click here IMMEDIATELY to get your formula.

My First Bacon

2010-04-01T11:13:00.001-05:00

Ahead of next week's revamping of Bacon Du Jour, please enjoy this fabulous bacon-product from our friends at ThinkGeek....

Horror of horrors!

2010-03-11T07:29:00.000-06:00

The idea of not being able to taste bacon was terrifying to us...until it happened! Today, we are afflicted with a nasty cold that makes us feel like our heads are packed with swamp mud, and our throats have been scrubbed with Brillo pads. Worse still, we can't taste anything, including our beloved bacon. The one upside to this: the transformation of our voices. Head BDJ Lab Tech Jenni S sounds oddly like Harvey Fierstein, which is pretty darned awesome. Anyway, the lab is going to be on hiatus until we can exorcise these germs and get our bacon-tasting mechanisms back in working order.

BREAKIN' BACON: Bacon Rocket

2010-03-09T09:34:00.000-06:00

We've loved RatherGood ever since their bizarro Quiznos commercials bewildered America. Now, Joel Veitch and co. are ruling the Weird Wide Web with their charmingly strange videos. This video, though, isn't odd, so much as it is GENIUS. Behold...

Bruce Willis ain't bacon...

2010-03-03T10:23:00.000-06:00

...but in this new Gorillaz video, he's just as cool:

Test #206: Bacon and VEGGIE HOT DOG

2010-03-01T10:24:00.001-06:00

The subject
We at BDJ love meat, but we don't eat it exclusively. We nosh on veggies on a very regular basis, and we've even been known to consume meat substitutes. We're big fans of the Boca 'chicken' nuggets, we dig those meatless sausage patties (especially the maple-flavored ones), and we count the all-veg Chicago Diner among our favorite Windy City eateries. Veggie dogs, however, we just can't get behind. It's probably because they just can't match the satisfying texture and meatastic flavor of your average all-beef kosher dogs. We figure they could only be improved by the addition of bacon, so we wrapped a Smart Dogs wiener in bacon and hoped for the best.

The results
Hope died upon our first bite. The foamlike texture of the 'not dog' endured, so we felt like we were biting into a bacon-wrapped hunk of couch stuffing or something similarly non-edible. We swallowed one bite, then tossed the sample into the BDJ Labs waste receptacle.

The conclusion: Bacon and veggie hot dog = Bad dog! Bad!

Bacon Bit: Bacon in the Air at Dunder Mifflin

2010-02-25T15:04:00.000-06:00

Test #205: Bacon and NAPA CABBAGE

2010-02-22T10:04:00.000-06:00

The subject
Napa cabbage doesn't come from California's famed Napa Valley wine centre. It also doesn't come from NAPA Auto Parts (fine store, but we prefer JC Whitney for all our automotive parts/accessory needs). It originated in China and is now enjoyed throughout Asia (it's the most common base for kimchi, a spicy Korean delicacy). We bought a head for use in a vegetarian potsticker recipe; since we'll have plenty of leftovers, we decided to wrap a bit of this in bacon and report on the results.

The results
Yummy--the leaf, and especially the hardy spine portion, held up well to bacon-baking, retaining a significant crunch while soaking up a nice amount of bacony flavor. We've had brussels sprouts in bacon--we think we might take some more of the napa cabbage leaves, chop 'em up, and stir-fry with some bacon and shiitake mushrooms to accompany the potstickers as a side dish.

The conclusion: Bacon + napa cabbage = yum

Test #204: Bacon and COTTON CANDY

2010-02-19T10:14:00.000-06:00

The subject
As much as we love Morgan Freeman, we love cotton candy more. You give the guy behind the counter a couple bucks; he takes it, and turns a couple scoops of sugar into a delicious assemblage of edible gossamer sweetness, which melts in your mouth nearly instantly. Empty calories never felt so fulfilling. Because we love it so much, and because it was on sale at Strack & Van Til, we decided to wrap our cotton candy in bacon, which is something you cannot do with America's most beloved actor. Well, you could try wrapping Morgan Freeman in bacon, but something tells me he wouldn't cotton to it. Ha! See what we did there?

The results
We figured it would melt more quickly in the bacon than it normally does in our maws, and it did. However, it left behind the bright-as-bejeezus food coloring used to make cotton candy blue and pink (we're pretty sure those chemicals would endure after a nuclear attack), and sweetened the bacon itself. Not a complete waste, but not tasty enough to repeat--if you're in the mood for candied bacon, we highly recommend you just sprinkle a little bit of brown sugar and cinnamon on the strips during the last 5 minutes or so of the bacon-baking process.

The conclusion: Bacon + cotton candy = fair to middlin'

We love you dearly, Bacon Salt...

2010-02-16T08:35:00.001-06:00

...just maybe not this much:

Bacon on TEXTS FROM LAST NIGHT

2010-02-13T18:36:00.000-06:00

Texts from Last Night is one of our favorite sites to visit when we're not making, eating, researching, or talking about bacon. The site, which consists of user-submitted cell phone messages (usually sent right before, during, or in the aftermath of drunken shenanigans) is highly amusing--and, as it turns out, pretty bacon-centric in its own right.

Test #203: Bacon and GRAPES

2010-02-11T20:32:00.000-06:00

The subject
Grapes are nature's candy. Are they as good as chocolate? That's debatable. One thing's for sure: you can pop a whole bunch of grapes in your mouth and not deal with consequential guilt. Or ass embiggedness. And if you could pig out on bacon with as much joy and as little bad feelings as you can with these little orbs of deliciousness...well, the thought is almost too fabulous to consider.

Before we'd finished the entire massive bunch of grapes, we decided to salvage a few for to wrap in the bacon. And that's exactly what we did.

The results
Yummy! The grape nearly disappeared--the touch of crunch that a green seedless grape has when it's in perfect condition was gone, leaving only intensified sweetness with a touch of bacon flavor seeped in. It was like biting into a bacon bonbon with a grape jelly center. Yummers.

The conclusion: Bacon + grapes = fruitastic

Test #202: Bacon and TURKEY BACON

2010-02-10T21:50:00.000-06:00

The subject
In the past, there's been no love or respect for turkey bacon among the staff members of BDJ Labs. No offense to the bird that gave its life for the strips, but we've always felt that it just wasn't a meat product worthy of the "bacon" moniker. However, recently our friends Elana and Helen brought a package of the stuff to our Super Bowl party. Because it didn't get eaten on Sunday, it languished in the fridge, until we decided to give it the bacon treatment. And, while we waited for the test subjects to come out of the oven, we decided to nosh on some naked, unwrapped turkey bacon. While we won't completely go back on our former diss of the TB, we will admit that it tastes decent--hammy, not bacony--and we'll give it points for aspiring to be something greater than plain bird meat.

The results
Yummy--the turkey bacon didn't crisp up (it doesn't when baked on its own, either), but instead soaked up bacony grease and plenty of flavor. When coupled with the crispy bacony bacon on the outside, it was like eating crunchy bacon with a soft bacon center. All in all, a savory, bacony success.

The conclusion: Bacon + turkey bacon=worth gobbling up

Test #201: Bacon and BACON SALT SUNFLOWER SEEDS

2010-02-05T16:12:00.001-06:00

The subject
One of our absolute things from the 2009 All Candy Expo (which had a big bunch of savory snacks, along with the sweets) were Bigs Sunflower Seeds--they come in crazy flavors like Frank's Red Hot (in our opinion, the best major-label hot sauce out there), Vlassic dill pickle, and the pinnacle of awesome tastes, Bacon Salt. We've never been the hugest fans of sunflower seeds, but when they taste like bacon, they're irresistible. We received a package of samples today from the company, and as a thank-you to the fine people at Bigs, we thought we'd give their fine product a big bacon salute.

The results
Awesome--the already bacontastic flavor of the sunflower seeds was amplified about 10 times by bacon wrapping. To return the favor, the shells added crunch to the crispy bacon. The texture might be a bit much for those that prefer to split and discard the shells before eating the seeds in the middle--we're the whole-nine-yards kind when it comes to sunflower seeds--but we think the texture was spot on.

The conclusion: Bacon + Bacon Salt sunflower seeds = a home run

Test #200: Bacon and GRAHAM CRACKER

2010-02-02T18:34:00.000-06:00

The subject
Yes, we know the subject of this picture isn't a graham cracker--it's the late, great Monty Python trouper Graham Chapman, best known as King Arthur in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Unfortunately, graham crackers, delicious though they may be, aren't very photogenic. We're a big fan of both Mr. Chapman and his namesake snack, so we decided to try the bacon treatment. On the cracker, not the Chapman--he'd probably taste funny.

The results
Fabulous--we expected the cracker to completely fall apart (ever try dunking a graham cracker in hot cocoa? A disaster). It did get quite soggalicious, but it maintained its square shape, and grahammy flavor, mixed in with the seeped-in savory bacon taste. Consensus among the baconeers in attendance is that this test is well worth repeating--we'd recommend wrapping the lucky cracker up with a marshmallow and a square of your favorite chocolate for a s'more that'd put the Girl-Scouts-round-the-campfire version to shame.

The conclusion: Bacon + graham cracker = something completely different

We interrupt your regularly scheduled bacon broadcast...

2010-02-01T15:34:00.001-06:00

...to bring you this picture of Mad Men star Christina Hendricks. If bacon were to spring to life and take human form, it might look a great deal like this salty, savory lass. We don't care where this photograph was taken (though we thank What Would Tyler Durden Do? for sharing them), who made her dress, or what kind of flower that is that's pinned to her frock. We just know that the scenes in which her character, Sterling Cooper office manager Joan, walks out of a room make the show worth watching, and life worth living. Plus, we're pretty sure she could bring about world peace with her boobs.

Test #199: Bacon and KOOL-AID POWDER

2010-01-28T10:21:00.000-06:00

The subject
Our procurement department's on probation. The staff charged with buying items for us to wrap left with our weekly allotment for things to wrap bacon around. Everything they came back with, we'd already tested. Except, that is, a canister of Kool-Aid drink mix--they proclaimed they were thirsty and seemed proud that they'd been thrifty enough to acquire the powder, rather than buy a case of soda or such. Whatever--since it's all we have to work with this morning, we're testing it. We sprinkled the powder on the bacon, and baked it. Here goes nothing...

The results
Fruity bacon. That's about it. Since we went with fruit punch, the strips turned out looking like bacon found on a gruesome crime scene. Not very appetizing. And while the punchy pork strips didn't taste all that bad, the consistency needed a bit more oomph or crunch or something. If hankering for fruity bacon, we'd definitely go back to sprinkling the strips with crushed Jolly Ranchers in the last few minutes of baking, as we did in an earlier test.

The conclusion: Bacon + Kool-Aid powder = Oh, no!

Blue Ribbon Bacon Festival

2010-01-26T14:48:00.000-06:00

It kills us that we can't go to this, but maybe you, our fellow baconeers, can attend. The annual Blue Ribbon Bacon Festival is landing in Des Moines, Iowa, on Saturday, February 27th. There will be live music, there will be parades, there will be seminars--and oh, yes, THERE WILL BE BACON. So far, organizers have secured more than half a ton of bacon. HALF A TON. According to the people behind the festival, they estimate that by the time the curtain goes up on this meaty show, they'll have about 1.5 lbs. of bacon for every man, woman, and child that strolls through the pork-scented air of the event. Tickets go on sale Feb. 4; click on the pig at left for more info.

Deadly Bacon

2010-01-23T12:37:00.000-06:00

The Travel Channel's Ghost Stories is a guilty pleasure of ours--it shares earnest eyewitness accounts of troubled souls haunting various locales, interspersed with melodramatic narration so over the top in its ominous tone it makes Boris Karloff sound like Mister Rogers. Today's episode covers the Villisca axe murders of 1912, in which an Iowa hacked up by an unknown "demon" one fateful night has decided to haunt the modest home for all eternity. If we were ghosts, we'd ditch the house and find a four-star hotel to spookify, but that's just us.

Anyway, you're probably wondering why this is showing up on a blog about bacon. This passage from the Villisca Axe Murders historical Web site tells why (warning: it's a little unsavory):

The Bacon Slab

According to the reports given during the inquest, a slab of bacon was found on the floor near the axe in the downstairs bedroom.

Reports indicate the size of the slab as being between 2 and 4 pounds, Although many believed that it had been cut off a similar slab found in the icebox, no one atually thought to make the two pieces up to confirm the theory.

Although many believed that the murderer used the bacon in an attempt to confuse the bloodhounds, the opposite would have actually been true.

If the killer rubbed the bacon on himself, he would have actually been easier, not harder for the dogs to track.

Another possible theory that seems a little more plausible is that the killer may have used the bacon as a masturbatory aid.

The position of Lena's body and the absence of any undergarments made many believe that the killer had positioned her after her death and using the bacon grease as a lubricant, had performed some type of sexual act.

According to the coroner's report, however, no actual rape had occurred.

Blast from the Past: Hover Bacon

2010-01-20T09:02:00.000-06:00

YouTube clips come and YouTube clips go, but there are some that never fail to make us smile, even though we've seen them about a zillion times. One is Alanis Morissette's cover of the Black Eyed Peas' "My Humps. Another: Rather Good's "Hover Bacon" clip--although we fully acknowledge that while the vid makes us giggle, it's weird enough to make most others cower in fear. We'll let you decide for yourself.

Broadway Babe Backs Oscar Mayer's Good Mood Mission

2010-01-19T20:25:00.000-06:00

UPDATE TO THE UPDATE: Click here for an even better video--KC being interviewed by kids. SO DANGED ADORABLE.

: 9:52 a.m., 1/20/10: Click here to check out a video of the Oscar Mayer Good Mood Mission flash mob, and GMM ambassador KC's story.

Everyone at BDJ Labs is in love with Kristin Chenoweth--she's the original Glinda of Wicked, no Emmy was ever more deserved than her Best Supporting Actress statuette at last year's ceremony (sadly, the show she was nominated, Pushing Daisies, was prematurely and stupidly canceled), and her guest spot on Glee was arguably the best hour of television in '09. She's a wee little ball of sunshine, and we can't think of a better good-mood ambassador than her.

Fortunately, the people at Oscar Mayer thought so, too, so they turned to her for their Good Mood Mission. The campaign is looking to give a total of 2 million pounds of food to America's hungry, and encouraging consumers to help by sending good moods to their friends and loved ones through the Good Mood Mission site, and the Mission's Facebook page. To add to the awesome, if you take part in the smilefest, you can get rewarded with special offers and coupons for Oscar Mayer products, like their yummy bacon. At a time when so many people in our country and around the world are in need, and the economy has everyone down in the dumps, Ms. Chenoweth and Oscar Mayer are giving everyone a lift.

"It doesn't get better than the feeling you get from helping others," said Chenoweth. "I'm thrilled to work with the Oscar Mayer brand to kick off their Good Mood Mission, putting good moods to good use for Feeding America."

We couldn't agree more. With Oscar Mayer's Good Mood Mission campaign, everyone's a wiener.

Bacon Helping Haiti

2010-01-18T09:31:00.000-06:00

It's hard to joyfully enjoy a mouthful of bacon when so many people not so very far away from BDJ Labs don't have anything at all right now. To help out the Haiti relief effort, Bacon Du Jour will be foregoing a week of its bacon budget and donating the money to the American Red Cross--it's a small sacrifice, but every bit counts. In addition, meat-industry publication MeatingPlace is reporting that several member companies are contributing what they can to Haitian earthquake relief efforts:

Tyson Foods is matching employee donations up to $100,000 for Haiti relief efforts. The contributions will go to the Salvation Army, which has personnel on-site and is preparing one million ready-to-eat meals to send to Haiti. Tyson also is exploring ways to provide in-kind relief to accountable organizations providing assistance in Haiti.
Hormel Foods is matching employee donations up to $25,000 for relief efforts, with all contributions going to the American Red Cross.
ConAgra Foods Foundation, a long-time Red Cross supporter, said it will give an additional $100,000 to the International Red Cross Relief Fund for aid to Haiti.
Cargill is making an initial corporate donation of $50,000 to long-time Cargill partners CARE and the World Food Programme. In Minneapolis, Cargill volunteers at the company's headquarters will be packaging 20,000 meals on Jan. 18 for the nonprofit Kids Against Hunger, which will be sent directly to people in Haiti; Cargill volunteers will be packaging an additional 30,000 meals over the next month.
McDonald's Corp. and its franchisee Arcos Dorados each will contribute $500,000 to the International Federation of the Red Cross to be used for its disaster relief efforts. Arcos Dorados, which operates nearly 1,700 McDonald's restaurants in Latin America, said it expects to generate an additional $500,000 in funds by donating 50 cents for each Big Mac sandwich sold from Jan. 16-22.
Yum Brands Inc., owner of KFC, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut, said it is directing $500,000 to Haiti from its World Hunger Relief program launched in 2007. Yum Brands Foundation also will match Yum employee donations up to $500,000. Funds raised will go to the United Nations World Food Programme and other relief programs.
The Walmart Foundation pledged $500,000 to Red Cross emergency relief efforts in Haiti and is sending pre-packaged food kits worth $100,000 to Haiti at the request of the Red Cross.
Publix Super Markets Charities said it is donating $100,000 to the Red Cross for relief efforts in Haiti.

Test #198: Bacon and COTTON BALL

2010-01-14T12:32:00.000-06:00

The subject
In Elf, Will Ferrell artfully portrays Buddy, a human who believes he's one of Santa's lil' helpers. He has some strange eating habits. As he states, elves stick to the four major food groups: candy, candy canes, candy corn, and syrup. However, in once scene, he opts for another snack: cotton balls. Despite admonishments from his "papa," he pops one right after the other. When BDJ Lab staffers watched the scene at a recent post-holiday gathering, we figured: Heck, if they're good enough for Buddy, they're probably good enough for bacon. Right?

The results
Oh, dear God in heaven and all that He oversees on Earth, we couldn't have been wronger. We have never--we repeat: never--until this test spit out a sample without even swallowing a bite. Never, that is, until now. We were hoping for bacon-infused cotton candy, but what we got was nearly too horrible to describe--stringy, lumpy, flavorless (the cotton didn't absorb a single drop of precious bacony fluids) and just plain yuck. We should have known, you said? Perhaps...but at least we had the balls to try.

The conclusion: Bacon + cotton balls = yucky

Test #197: Bacon and BLOOD ORANGE

2010-01-13T22:06:00.000-06:00

The subject

Peeling an orange in January can shock you out of your winter doldrums like no other food can. The first breach of the zest instantly sends the vibrant scent of citrus up and into your brain, and it's hard not to forget--if only for a moment--the cold, dreary world that lies outside your kitchen. Blood oranges taste nearly identical, but the vibrant color of the center only adds to the kick. Even serial killers like Dexter enjoy citrus fruit, as witnessed in the opening credits of his Showtime drama (the most strikingly gorgeous minute on television, in our opinion). We decided to wrap a single segment of sunshine in bacon and see what transpired.

The results
Many foods intensify in sweetness when heated up. In this case, the sugar level of the orange gave way to tartness, providing an interesting counternote to the savory bacon wrapped around it. The juice didn't leach out, but bacony goodness snuck into the fruit, making us think that if some enterprising farmer figured how he could cross an orange with a pig (kind of like Homer Simpson crossed a beefsteak 'mater with tobacco to come up with the Tomacco), he'd be a wealthy man, indeed.

The conclusion: Bacon + blood orange = killer flavor

Test #196: Bacon and MUSHROOM

2010-01-08T09:42:00.000-06:00

The subject

For not being meat, mushrooms are pretty danged tasty. And versatile, too--you can fry them, marinate them, toss them on top of everything from salads to pizzass...and if you're a Smurf, you can live in them. Faced with an overabundance of porcini mushrooms (our favorite--no offense, portabellos), we wrapped one up in bacon and baked that mofo up.

The results
Awesome--the mushroom morphed into a moist, bacon-flavored morsel, and its smooth texture perfectly complemented the bacon's crispy crunchiness. Definitely worth repeating--in fact, we can see ourselves stuffing mushroom caps with stuff like crabmeat or cheese before wrapping for an extra-tasty treat.

The conclusion: Bacon + mushroom = Smurfalicious

What do you do with a drunken senior?

2010-01-08T07:23:00.001-06:00

Not this--it's horrible. I mean, LOOK at all that wasted bacon!

Carnivores Unite!

2010-01-07T18:17:00.001-06:00

from our friends at Passive-aggressive Notes

Test #195: Bacon and CHOCOLATE-COVERED SUNFLOWER SEEDS

2010-01-05T12:58:00.000-06:00

As Carl Weaver of the National Confectioners Association so astutely points out in his blog, people love mixing chocolate with savory. The concept isn't so new--how many years have we been enjoying chocolate-covered pretzels, potato chips, and other snack items? What's different is the variety that's popping up. The pinnacle of this trend is, of course, chocolate-covered bacon, but we do love the increase in the number of companies offering chocolate-covered sunflower seeds. Tasty, yes, but you can almost convince yourself that you're munching on something healthy. Almost.

We took some of the chocolate-covered sunflower seeds we bought off the Christmas clearance rack at World Market (75% off--woo-hoo!) and wrapped them in savory bacon. How did it turn out?

The results
...pretty darned good, it turns out. The artificially dyed candy coating kind of went liquid and oozed out the size, but we didn't need it anyway. What remained--salty bacon, sweet chocolate, and crunchy seeds. Not just a fabulous flavor combination, but a nifty texture mixture to boot. Worth repeating, except we might be inclined to break it down and just do plain seeds, chocolate chips, and bacon.

The conclusion: Bacon + chocolate-covered sunflower seeds = a bright idea

Test #194: Bacon and COMBOS

2010-01-03T09:11:00.000-06:00

The subject
About a year ago, convenience-store shelves in some random parts of the country were graced for a brief time with Bacon, Egg & Cheese combos. Not everywhere--and not in the Chicago area, otherwise the staff of BDJ Labs would have snapped up a few cases. Bloggers across the country marveled at the snack oddity, theorizing that they must be some super-secret trial flavor, because the Combos people didn't even list the flavor on their Web site. Sadly, the super-secret trial must be over, because the BC&E Combos bags disappeared from those spare few stores almost as quickly as they'd popped up. Oh, well--there's still the pretzel/cheddar, cracker/cheddar, cracker/pizza, and (our personal favorite) salsa/tortilla. They're tasty--although, for some reason, we seem to only eat them on road trips. This one time, we took a bag out of the BDJmobile and into the lab for bacon-wrapping.

The results
Pretty darned good. We've wrapped plain pretzels in bacon before and dug the way the snacks retain their crunch while still managing to take on some awesome bacony flavor (and grease). Same here, only with the added bonus of a cheesy core. We only wish the cheese would have been melty-gooey, like the real thing, and not the dry, powdery fakish stuff at the center of Combos. Ah, well. Can't always have everything.

The conclusion: Bacon + Combos = not too shabby

YAAAAAAAAY! Bacon winners!

2010-01-02T11:16:00.000-06:00

We've picked the lucky winners in the end-of-2009 Bacon Bonanza (or whatever we named the contest) from our Twitter and blog friends and followers. Sometime soon, these lucky individuals will be sinking their teeth into rashers of Oscar Mayer Super Thick Applewood Smoked bacon. Here they are, so you direct your seething jealousy at them...

Twitter followers:
@gingerkiller
@kanudig_it
@lamesauce22
@gottabebacon
@loveandbacon

BDJ blog followers:
Seida Bacon
Amy Vernon
Chris Pullman

Ring In 2010 With Oscar Mayer Bacon

2009-12-31T08:07:00.000-06:00

Chef John Li has one of the most enviable jobs in the world. As senior executive chef for Kraft Foodservice, he gets to spend his workday playing with his food.

Among the recent edibles he's been toying with: Oscar Mayer Super Thick Cut Applewood Smoked Bacon. The name might be a mouthful, but so's the bacon--at nine slices per 16-oz package, an individual strip is more than twice the thickness of your average rasher. Why, when the bacon lovers of America are seeing their food budgets getting trimmer, did Oscar Mayer decide to plump up its bacon?

"Bacon is hot right now--it's the 'It' ingredient," says Chef Li. "Fine-dining restaurants are cutting their own pork bellies and trying things with different smokes, cutting bacon very thick, and putting a lot of effort into it. We wanted to give people that restaurant experience, but without the expense or hassle."

Their hard work paid off--the super-thick rashers have more in common with a steak than the flimsy, paper-thin pork strips most bacon brands you find in a supermarket. "Cutting it thick over thin gives you a whole different eating experience--it's more meaty and indulgent," he says. It also uses applewood, rather than the conventional hickory, for a better balance between the meat's savory/salty/smoky notes.

After Oscar Mayer came up with the Super Thick prototype, Chef Li and co. got to play mad bacon scientists and come up with recipes. They crafted maple-bacon ice cream, poured bacon bloody marys, and whipped up batches of candied bacon. They also cooked it up by its lonesome. By the way, Chef Li advises that if you're cooking up a mess o' bacon at once, oven-baking is the way to go. Less mess, no need to flip, and it imparts the Super Thick bacon with that ideal chewy/crispy texture baconeers crave so desperately. However, if you're cooking up a few strips, he encourages home chefs to use a wide, deep-sided skillet...and reserve the pan grease for other cooking (toasting croutons for salad, say).

The people at Oscar Mayer were kind enough to ship a bunch of the Super Thick bacon to BDJ Labs, along with some of Chef Li's recipe creations. We tried them, to universal rave reviews. However, as awesome as the bacon is in recipes, it's delish all by itself--consensus among Labs staff is that it's better than any bacon we've ever picked up from a supermarket, end of story.

As you're preparing for your New Year's Eve celebrations, and tomorrow's football-watching parties, you might want to one or all of these scrumptious ideas yourself, and get 2010 off to a fabulous, bacony start.

CHEESY BACON BRUSCHETTA
Prep time: 25 minutes
Total time: 28 minutes
Serves 4
Ingredients:
2 slices Oscar Mayer Super Thick Cut Applewood Smoked Bacon, cut crosswise into 1/2-in-wide strips
4 slices French bread, 3/4 in thick
1 tsp olive oil
1 clove garlic, halved
4 extra-thin Swiss cheese slices, cut in half
1 plum tomato, seeded/chopped
HEAT broiler.
COOK and stir bacon in skillet on medium heat 12 min. or until browned; drain on paper towels.
MEANWHILE, brush one side of each bread slice with oil. Broil, 4 inches from heat, 1 to 2 min. or until toasted; rub with cut sides of garlic.
COVER with 4 cheese pieces, bacon and tomatoes. Top with remaining cheese; broil 1 min. or until melted.

NEW ORLEANS-STYLE MAPLE-BACON PRALINES
Prep Time: 30 minutes
Total Time: 40 minutes
Makes 25 servings
Ingredients:
6 slices OSCAR MAYER Super Thick Cut Applewood Smoked Bacon, finely chopped
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) unsalted butter
1-1/2 cups packed brown sugar
1 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup maple syrup
1/4 c whipping cream
1 pkg (6 oz) pecan halves
1 tsp ground cinnamon
COOK and stir bacon in skillet on medium heat 12 min. or until browned; drain on paper towels
PLACE next 5 ingredients in large saucepan; cook on medium heat 15 min. or until temperature reaches 239ºF (soft-ball stage) on candy thermometer, stirring occasionally.
REMOVE saucepan from heat. Stir in bacon, nuts and cinnamon. Immediately pour onto baking sheet sprayed with cooking spray; refrigerate 10 min. or until firm. Break into bite-size pieces.

TEXAS-STYLE BLT
Prep Time 15 minutes
Serves 2
Ingredients:
1-1/2 Tbsp. mayonnaise
1-1/2 Tbsp. thick-and-spicy barbecue sauce
4 slices cracked wheat bread, toasted
2 lettuce leaves
2 slices sweet onion
1 tomato, cut into 4 slices
4 slices OSCAR MAYER Super Thick Cut Applewood Smoked Bacon, cooked
MIX mayo and barbecue sauce; spread onto toast slices.
FILL toast slices with remaining ingredients to make 2 sandwiches.

BREAKIN' BACON NEWS: Sweet bacon cookoff

2009-12-30T09:11:00.000-06:00

Baconeers know that salty, savory bacon makes an excellent companion to sweet stuff--chocolate, apples, caramel, etc. Now, one of the country's finer newspapers has caught on and is sponsoring a bacon dessert cookoff. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel is offering fame and fabulous prizes to one amateur chef, and one pro, who can come up with a tantalizing treat that features bacon. You have until Jan. 11 to send in your entry. Think you have what it takes? Click here, Spartacus.

Bacon Bit: Chicago Mag's Big Bacon Bonanza

2009-12-29T09:00:00.000-06:00

The excellent local rag Chicago Magazine has put five bacon brands to the test--
1. Strips from Paulina Meat Market
2. Applewoody bacon from Nueske's
3. Pork planks from Niman Ranch
4. Hickory-smoked jobbies from Gepperth's
5. Applewood-smoked stuff from Dreymiller & Kray

Not surprising, Nueske's came out on top, but the others measured up fairly well. If you'd like to read the details, click right here.

Test #193: Bacon and ESCAROLE

2009-12-28T15:40:00.000-06:00

The subject
The BDJ Labs Christmas dinner consisted of a bunch of Food Network recipes, including a dish from Emeril Lagasse: Herb Cheese-stuffed Eggplant with Braised Radicchio, Fennel and Escarole. Absolutely scrumptious, despite the complete absence of bacon from the ingredient list. The downside: we're up to our armpits in leftover escarole, which is a leafy green related to endive (fun fact: also a close cousin of the daisy). We're weary of escarole salads, so we figured, WTF--let's wrap some in bacon.

The result
Wow--two "meh" tests in a row. Not good. Not horrible, either--the flavor was pretty okay, but the texture was a little off. We likes us some wilted greens, but the escarole hunks we wrapped up in the bacon got too wilty. A far better combo would have been a salad with a poppyseed or ranch dressing, and some crispy bacon crumbled atop the whole shebang.

The conclusion: Bacon + escarole = not exactly BAM! worthy

Test #192: Bacon and VODKA BEANS

2009-12-27T12:47:00.001-06:00

The subject
Vodka is a magical libation--but dang, it's expensive (except for the low-brow brands like Wolfschmidt, which some well-meaning soul brought to our BDJ Labs Halloween party and left here, but it's about eight miles past nasty, unfortunately). Which is why, when we saw a box labeled "vodka beans" at Gene's Sausage Shop in Chicago's Lincoln Square, we were thrilled. We envisioned extracting the seeds from said beans, planting them in the patch of earth behind the complex, then harvesting 1.75-L bottles of the stuff toward the end of the summer.

Sadly, the "beans" are somewhat of a fraud--they're actually little boomerang-shaped chocolates with vodka filling. No vodka bushes in the backlot for us. Still pretty awesome, though--each little boozy bonbon is 26 proof, so if you were to eat a box all by yourself, you'd be feeling no pain. We decided to wrap one in bacon and see if we couldn't improve on the beans.

The results
Meh. The whole, in this case, is not greater than the sum of the parts. The bacon cooked up crisp-chewy, but the bacon and hootch kind of escaped, even though we wrapped the beans up in swaddling bacon clothes, kind of like tiny 8 lb, 6 oz baby Jesus. So, we were left with bacon that was merely kissed with chocolate, and a hint of vodka-y goodness. It would have been better had we cooked the bacon, then maybe topped a slice with a bean. Better yet, keep the two separate and enjoy their wonders apart.

The conclusion: Bacon + vodka beans = nyet good.

Give YOURSELF the gift of bacon!

2009-12-26T09:41:00.001-06:00

The gifts are all opened, the wrapping paper's in the Dumpster, and the Christmas wine has become hangover juice (sorry--we'll type quietly so we don't make your headache worse). Did you get everything you wanted? Probably not. At the very least, we KNOW you didn't get enough bacon.

We at BDJ Labs are nothing, if not helpful. We'd love to help you reduce your holiday bacon deficit with a package of delicious Oscar Mayer Super Mega Ultra Thick bacon. It's awesome--about the size of three regular, wussy strips of bacon stacked on top of each other. Perfect for recipes, well-above-average BLTs, and all your other bacon needs. To get your own personal bacon, you just have to:
A. Become a BDJ Disciple (scroll down the right-hand side of this page and scroll down to the "follow" button--hit that puppy and you're golden).
B. Retweet this here message: "RT this here tweet and win Oscar Mayer#BACON from Bacon Du Jour! http://bacn.me/kgl #bdjme "

We'll draw a few ppl from Column A and Column B and send them coupons for free packages of Oscar Mayer Super Thick Bacon. You can enter up to six times a day (any more than that and you'll annoy the shiitake out of your followers).

Good luck, baconeers!

2009 Bacon Gift Guide Item 12: The Greatest Gift of All

2009-12-25T06:59:00.000-06:00

Oh, hell--it's Christmas Day and, on your way to the big family gathering, you realize you forgot a gift for your mom/sister/grandma/the weird uncle you hope you don't have to sit next to at dinner because he drinks too much and quotes Glenn Beck constantly. The only store open is Walgreen's, and you really don't want to get your giftee the latest copy of In Touch. Give them bacon--it's cheap, delicious, and you're sure to get high praise from all the others in the room.

A very bacon-y Christmas to you all!

2009 Bacon Gift Guide Item 11: Christian Yoga

2009-12-24T15:49:00.001-06:00

What does this have to do with bacon, you ask? Nothing, really--it's just really friggin' funny. Janine Turner, who used to star in Northern Exposure, a top-rated television show (lo, how the mighty have fallen) is now sharing with us the wonders of combining Christ's love with the body-toning wonders of yoga. As she and yoga whiz Mary Cunningham work through poses like the Mighty Disciple and Salvation Rotation, they impart life lessons and discuss scripture. It must work--look at the abs Jesus gave her.

While, sadly, this is out of print, you can find it used at eBay, used video stores, and the like. Good luck, and God bless.

2009 Bacon Gift Guide Item 10: Bacon Book

2009-12-23T21:50:00.000-06:00

Many a baconeer isn't content with feeding their mouth bacon--they also wish to feed their minds. How is bacon made? Where does it come from? Where does the word "bacon" come from? Author and bacon broad Heather Lauer's book answers all those questions and more--and includes tons of delicious recipes to boot.

Amazon.com, $12.23.

BREAKING BACON: Big Oscar Mayer Bacon Bonanza Giveaway!

2009-12-22T17:31:00.001-06:00

The staff of BDJ Labs is pleased as punch to announce our first BIG! BACON! GIVEAWAY! The kind folks at Oscar Mayer were kind enough to send us a big pig pack of their new super-duper thick, applewood smoked bacon (rave review coming soon), and a huge-ass stack of coupons for when we run out. While we'd very much like to keep all of this fabulousness for ourselves, this stuff is too good NOT to share. So, we're giving it away.

"How can I get some of that yummy Oscar Mayer bacon in my own belleh?" you ask? We answer--one (or both) of two ways:
1. Become a BDJ Disciple--scroll down on the home page and look on the right. See that "follow" button? Click that mother and you're entered.
2. Tweet for meat--cut and paste the following msg to your followers "Free Oscar Mayer bacon? Yes, please! http://bacn.me/jx3 #bdjme"

Each day, we'll draw a lucky winner and announce here on BDJ until we run out of coupons. We're not gonna start drawing until the day after Christmas, but you can get a jump on your competition by following BDJ and tweeting now. Tweet up to six entries a day.

Good luck, and Happy Holidays!

2009 Bacon Gift Guide Item 9: DIY Bacon Wrapping Paper

2009-12-22T15:19:00.001-06:00

We aren't a big fan of paying for wrapping paper--it's just a temporary barrier to the joy held inside, and it gets discarded as soon as the present is revealed. Such a waste. That's why we often print our OWN wrapping paper--looks cool, it's more personal, and it's FREE. If you have access to a color printer, that is. Here's an ideal solution to put some cool wrapping around some smaller presents for the baconeers in your life.
1. Click on this bacony image, then right-click to "save image as" onto your desktop.
2. Open any word-processing file (like, say, Word) and create a new document as big as your color printer will allow. Make the margins small, about 1/2".
3. Insert the picture into your document, and paste it repeatedly.
4. Print one or several color copies

Voila! Bacon wrapping paper! And it's free--less dough spent on paper means more to procure cured meats. Awwww, yeahhhh.

2009 Bacon Gift Guide Item 8: Nueske's Bacon

2009-12-21T14:49:00.001-06:00

We were gonna say something corny like, "And on the eighth day, God created Nueske's bacon," but he didn't. However, he DID create the Nueske family some odd years ago, and THEY created their heavenly bacon. There's a reason why chefs all over the country use Nueske's swine strips in their recipes, and why restaurants all over the U.S. of A. give Nueske's top billing on their menus--it's incomparable.

The staff of BDJ Labs made a pilgrimage to Wittenberg, Wisconsin last week and picked up several pounds of the stuff (report to come next week), and we've been munching on it steadily since we returned. However, since we know not everyone's within easy driving distance of the Bacon Capitol of the World, we're more than happy to share the Nueske's site, where you can buy bacon, sausage, hams, and all sorts of treats, and have them delivered to your beloved's door. Purchase this for the baconeers on your list, and you'll definitely be their favorite person this joyous season.

Nueske's, prices vary.