Crackers

by Vicki Reich, from the February 2002 Newsletter

When you think of healthy food, the last thing that usually comes to mind is bacon, but I'd recently had a hankering for some and I decided to taste test them to see which I liked best. Until about a year ago this would have been impossible since the Co-op didn't carry any bacon.

Now we carry three different brands (Hempler's, Valley's Family of Farms, and SaraJoe's Organic).

Taste-testing bacon is a daunting proposition. Each kind needs to be cooked in it's own pan and then you have a couple of pounds of bacon to eat. I needed help and Kenna valiantly came to my rescue. "How about I bring Tim over to your house a big breakfast of bacon and eggs?" she asked. Now that I had someone to help me eat all that bacon I was ready to go.

Luckily, I have more cooking equipment than I know what to do with, so coming up with three frying pans was no problem. Cooking in that many fry pans at once was not as easy. When the doorbell rang all I could do was yell "come in" since leaving my post at the stove would have definitely resulted in burned bacon. When all of that glorious fat and pork was ready, I scrambled up some eggs, toasted some bread and we sat down to discover the best of the bunch.

Even before I tasted the first slice, I noticed a difference between the three. The Hempler's bacon was much thicker with less fat than the others, it also released some liquid and not much fat when it was cooking. SaraJoe's had the most fat on it before cooking (although the Valley's ran a very close second) and a delicious smoky flavor that emanated from it while cooking. Valley's had a distinct reddish color to it (I read the ingredients and found out they add beet powder to get that color).

The blind taste testing began when Tim nabbed a piece off the plate with SaraJoe's bacon on it and thus it was first. It has a slightly sweet, slightly smoky, complex flavor and a good combination of fatty sections and meaty sections. It was crisp and delicious and was sampled again and again. SaraJoe's bacon ($5.75/#) is made from organically grown pork that is raised locally in St. John, Washington.

Next up was Hempler's uncured bacon ($4.95/12 oz.), which is not organically grown but contains no nitrates or preservatives. This is a very meaty bacon. The slices are thick and reminded Tim and I of Canadian bacon. The flavor is meaty as well and has a strong pork or ham taste. This is a serious slice of bacon and would not work well in recipes calling for crumbled bacon.

The last bacon we tasted was Valley's Family of Farms ($4.85/8oz.). This was the mildest and crispiest of the three. It reminded me of the bacon of my childhood and we all agreed that kids would probably like this brand the best. Of course, you can never be too sure of your initial opinion about a product so we had to go back for seconds and in some cases thirds to make sure we still really liked bacon. And we did!

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