ZOMBIE THREADSPOTTING: Bacon Salt

Well, their blog says:

w.

Well, that must taste like it came from one charmin’ motherfuckin’ pig.

I could not understand your absurd question until I looked at your location. A fella might think that way if he only had Canadian bacon. :wink:

This thread reminds me, I need to call Lumber Liquidators. Their radio spot says they specialize in " hardwood, bamboo, and Pork Flooring."

Mmmmm, pork flooring!

I have completed my cooking and taste tests.

Full writeup to be posted tomorrow.

Preliminary result: thumbs up. :smiley:

I’m ordering it and putting a Philly twist to it: (Philadelphia, PA, USA, that is)

Bacon salt flavored Philly Cheesteaks.
Bacon salt flavored Philly Soft Pretzels.
Bacon salt flavored Philly Cream Cheese (ok, it ain’t from Philly, but think of bacony cream cheese goodness on a bagel)

There is a piece of Mac’s pizza (or Mac and Manko’s) just waiting for a dash of bacon salt.

Okay, here’s the scoop.

Overall, the bacon salt is quite good. It produces the flavor and aroma of bacon in the dishes in which I’ve used it. I’m not disappointed; I’ll use it frequently; I don’t expect it to last very long; I’ll buy more before I run out so I’m not without it. Woot woot and all that.

But if you’re looking for a mindblowingly transcendant experience, this isn’t it. Despite the crackhead babbling in the thread (mine especially), our collective tongue, I think, is at least partly in cheek. We know it won’t be that good. We may hope, but we know we should stay realistic; this won’t really be a life changer. If that’s what you actually expect, this will be a letdown. I was expecting a seasoning salt ranging from good to very good; I am impressed that it lands in the upper range of my scale.

The thing is, though, this doesn’t provide the total bacon experience. Bacon is about flavor and aroma, but an essential element, in my opinion, is the mouthfeel. The crispness combined with the fine, silky fat is simply luxurious on the tongue and in the mouth. (Really, it’s remarkable that so incredible a food should be so widely and cheaply available, and it’s sad that so many seem to take it for granted, the worship in this thread notwithstanding.) Bacon doesn’t just taste good and smell good; it FEELS good.

Bacon Salt doesn’t provide that texture, and therefore falls short of achieving ultimate baconosity. (For that, you’ll need devilsknew’s recipe above.) It is, nevertheless, as good as one could reasonably - emphasize reasonably - hope for in a seasoning salt.

To answer one common query, yes, this product strongly resembles fine-grained artificial bacon bits, and is probably manufactured in a similar manner. But granting the equivalence, Bacon Salt is far better than any artificial bacon bit product I’ve ever had. There’s a care to the flavor balances I don’t get from the ordinary fake stuff. If this is nothing but an artificial bacon bit, it’s the best artificial bacon bit I’ve ever had. This stuff has punch and character. There’s real personality here.

Tasting notes, comparing the three varieties: The Peppered style is not markedly more spicy than the Original. There’s a bit of pep, but only a bit. I have a very high tolerance for heat so I might not be the best judge here; still, the Peppered and the Original were pretty close together taste-wise. The Hickory, on the other hand, had a pronounced note of smoke. As such, its cooking applications will be more limited, but it’ll be great as a snack salt.

The specific taste tests:

For dinner Saturday, I sauteed garlic, asparagus, and Key West pink shrimp with Bacon Salt (Original variety), then deglazed with white wine, added scallion, and served it over fresh pasta that had been tossed with a little butter mixed with Bacon Salt (same).

For breakfast Sunday and Monday, I made several two-egg scrambles, trying each type of Bacon Salt in varying quantities. Based on Saturday night’s attempts to set an appropriate level of seasoning in the pasta, I kept track of the amounts of Bacon Salt in each scramble. I also threw in some parmesan for a “carbonara” echo, and more of the scallion.

Then for dinner Monday, I made a rib-eye steak (ATK method) which I’d rubbed with Bacon Salt (Peppered) and let stand for an hour, pan-roasted potatoes dusted with Bacon Salt and garlic powder, and peas mixed with a Bacon Salt sabayon.

Very simple recipes, with few other seasonings, to let the Bacon Salt speak for itself, and not get masked. The sabayon peas were the most significant exception, testing how the bacon salt might behave as a contributing flavor in a more complicated dish instead of as the main taste prop for an ingredient.

Results: delicious. Not as good as sex; Sex can breathe easy. But delicious nevertheless.

Lessons learned:

You need to use more than you would if it were just salt. The low-sodium measurement noted above is not an indication that the seasoning is magically super-powered; it just means you need to use more of it to get the same degree of pop. (I’m not afraid of salt but those who are trying to control their intake should take note.) I needed to add more to the first night’s pasta dish while I was eating it to get the right level of zing, both for salt and for baconitude, which is why I followed up with the variations in the eggs, testing measured quantities. The egg scramble with 1/8 teaspoon (Hickory) was pretty bland; the 1/4 teaspoon (Peppered) version was getting there; with 3/8 teaspoon (Original) it was just about right.

Be careful, though: the line between just enough and too much is crossed pretty dramatically. There’s no such thing as a little bit too much of this stuff; when you overdo it, it’s face-puckeringly powerful, and not in a good way. A two-egg scramble with 1/2 teaspoon of Original was borderline inedible.

Also: Bacon Salt works equally well as the star seasoning (going solo on the steak, shrimp, and asparagus) as it does as a contributor (with garlic on the potatoes, with a bunch of stuff in the sabayon). The one exception I discovered: I put a small splash of truffle oil on one bite of the 3/8-tsp egg dish and found it, with the bacon, to be overpoweringly intense.

And finally: The flavor can be reduced a fair amount if you add the Bacon Salt early in cooking. Plan to add a little more at the end. Also, it can get clumpy if you add it to a liquid ingredient (like stirring it into the pre-cooked eggs), so make sure to whisk thoroughly.

Other than that, the taste testing was a success, and freed the imagination. Some ideas: mixed with hamburger and onion for grilling; in salad dressing; with wilted spinach and butter; in deeply caramelized French onion soup; in the breading of fried chicken; on Brussels sprouts tossed with apple-cider syrup; on bruschetta; in pate; as an element of a slow curing rub, especially for seafood (compare); in duck fried rice; and more.

I suspect it’ll prove itself useful as a supporting and unifying element in more complex dishes, and will stand up to powerful flavors; imagine a white pizza (olive oil base, garlic, no tomato sauce, mozzarella and/or ricotta and/or provolone cheeses) with anchovies, roasted red peppers, basil, and Bacon Salt. And if there’s anyone out there in Doperland who has a secret family recipe for from-scratch barbecue sauce, I will bet you a public blowjob that no matter how good it is now a careful infusion of bacon salt will put it into freaking orbit.

Oh, and as expected, it’ll be brilliant on popcorn, french fries, and corn on the cob, no question.

But at the end of the day, it’s just a seasoning salt.
Offer of public blowjob may not be valid in your area. Please check local regulations.

I love this board.

:D…blowjob…heh

Will that be with bacon salt or without?

Er, any chance of anyone creating Bacon Sugar? I’ve got a Cajun Redneck Hubby who seriously wants this for his morning coffee—

Looking over my long post above, I see some crummy phraseology I should have fixed during preview:

Two things —

First, I meant to say, “The flavor can be degraded by heat if you add the Bacon Salt early in cooking.” It stood up well to a quick sear on the outside of the ribeye but I did use a lot and I also employed the ATK method so the flavor penetrated the meat before the sear. In the eggs and the shrimp/asparagus, the aroma and flavor was lessened during the few minutes of cooking. Therefore, in sautees and stir-frys, start with some seasoning to get it into the food, and add some more shortly before serving.

And second, “pre-cooked eggs” makes no sense. I meant “uncooked eggs prior to cooking.” But you knew that, right?

Oh, and by the way, I want to make my own potato chips with it, too. Mmmm.
bacon bacon bacon
blowjob
bacon

so it’s…

three shakes of bacon salt
blowjob
one shake of bacon salt

Jeez, you drive a hard bargain

I’m sorry I must reject you totally.
::: fingers in ears:::
LA…LA…LA…LA…LA…LA…LA…LA…LA…LA…LA…LA…LA…LA…LA…LA
I can’t hear you.

Good job, I suspect you are 100% right about the salt

and the blowjob.

I ordered mine at 10 pm Saturday night. Yesterday afternoon I got the delivery confirmation email. This afternoon my Bacon Salt arrived. I’ll try it with dinner tonight.
It does help I live only 20 miles from where it was shipped.

To heck with the Bacon Salt, I wanna know when Cervaise wants me to show up for dinner.

Cervaise, I’ll bet a public porking that I can make a better barbecue sauce without the bacon salt …If not, I’ll take the blowjob. There doesn’t seem to be a downside. That’s a bacon battle that I could really get into.

And Cincoflex, No reason you can’t use the candied bacon from my recipe as a straight up coffee baconater. Maybe grind a few rashers with actual coffee beans and brew up some french press or drip.

This is NOT FAIR. I was the first person in this thread other than the OP to order and I have yet to receive my confirmation email!

Bastards!

While looking at the Bacon Salt blog, I saw a link to this.
Artisan bacon delivered straight to your door.

I notice the cobb bacon (alternately, cob bacon), from your link. Is that corn cob smoked bacon? Or a proper name?

Beats me.
:confused:

The fact that there is a bacon-of-the-month club basically just solidified what I’m asking for for Christmas.

Also, I submitted this very thread to the bacon salt customer reviews. Who knows, maybe the bacon gods will grace us with their presence.