Posted on 01/13/2022 11:53:50 AM PST by mylife
n the Notes app on my phone, I keep a list called “Ingredients to Buy in the U.S.” Horseradish, cake flour, molasses, Chex Mix—I can’t find certain American foods in Madrid, so I lug them back with me, weight allowances be damned. But customs always swipes my most prized Proustian treasure, one that’s absent, astoundingly, in the Iberian Peninsula: good bacon. Smoky, crispy, sizzling slices of American-style bacon.
Bacon is Spain’s biggest culinary disappointment. Flabby, elastic, and chronically undercooked, it’s always too thick or too thin, too salty or too bland. It boasts neither the heady campfire scent of American bacon nor a whit of its tantalizing crispness. Bite into Spanish bacon, and it often bites you back, with nubbins of untrimmed cartilage cracking audibly between your teeth. The more bacon I spat into napkins in Spain, the more puzzled I became. Surely the culture that gave us chorizo and torreznos and exquisite Ibérico ham could make great bacon. So why was it nowhere to be found?
As I started digging for answers, I couldn’t help wondering, AITA? We food writers are an insufferable, persnickety lot; it’s how we make our living. Yet apparently misery loves company as much as Americans in Madrid love to whine about Spanish bacon. “It’s the color for me,” lamented my Ohioan friend Marlee, her nose wrinkling in disgust. “Too pink. It’s creepy.” Her roommate Regina, from Long Island, was quick to pile on: “As far as I’m concerned, there is no bacon in Madrid,” to which Melissa, from Queens, replied, “There was bacon on the table this morning. I gave mine away.”
(Excerpt) Read more at thedailybeast.com ...
About the only part of a pig I like is the tenderloin. Roast pork tenderloin with white gravy that’s good.
Bacon is too salty for me and I just always had the feeling even when I was young that it was laden with chemicals and it didn’t appeal to me, it still doesn’t, but I like Jimmy Dean hot and spicey turkey sausage.
“Manatee bacon... mmmm...”
I will never look at a Manatee the same way ever again...
Speaking of which, do you know how to keep Canadian bacon from curling in the skillet?
Take away their little brooms.
That’s a great series.
Have they tried making spam?
Spanish Spam?
Spam Español?
Lol
My good friend married a Spanish girl, and I went to the wedding in Madrid. At the rehearsal dinner, her parents had 3 whole Serrano hams, each with a desginated slicer on duty. I swear, I ate half of one by myself, so good!
Could be worse: Could be Canadian.
Speaking of which, do you know how to keep Canadian bacon from curling in the skillet?
Take away their little brooms.
You’ll soon be receiving a bill for my new keyboard
Caribs also smoked and slow-roasted Tainos.
The best ever. Smells like you’re smoking a brisket in your kitchen. https://shop.bentonscountryham.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=hscb
along with “too thick” and wanting to eat cysts (chorizo)
That’s ridiculous. A buccaneer was the price for earrings.
Seriously: same root word as bacon (”boucain,” meaning a sort of cooking or curing rack)
English bacon is the best. It is real bacon and not the pale substitute we have in the USA.
For breakfast in Spain we would choose from a fine variety of smoked hams, cheeses etc. It was delicious. I did not ever see what we call bacon.
We make damn fine bacon here.
Kinda. From boucan, over fire. But lots of beef cattle, wild, and smoked for preservation. And the “boucaneers” were pros, provisions was their game. Money to be made by supplying pirates and others, and a bit safer too.
But they have a tendency to catch fire.
"Oh, the huge manatee!"
Regards,
Did you at least try to do what Lucy and Ethel did, and hide it in the musical instruments of Ricky's band?
Regards,
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