So much bacon, so little time. Why is the world obsessed with this greasy side of pork? Everything from Bacon Maple Bars to Baconnaise, bacon has found its way into our hearts and into a million and one recipes. What do you plan to make with bacon today?

One of my personal favorites, Bacon Vinaigrette, turning a very healthy salad into a flavor explosion!

Meatloaf Cupcakes with Bacon Sprinkles!

Need More Bacon?!
International Bacon Day Blog
Keep on Bacon on, with The Bacon Show, one bacon recipe per day, every day!
Bacon Ice Cream! By David Lebovitz
Maple Bacon Cupcakes, by Vanilla Garlic

Above photo by: Chotda

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Isn’t it apropos that the gateway meat has it’s own day? And that day is today. So to help you get your pork on we’ve compiled a list of the piggy-licious, the pork-tastic, and well, some things that just made us snort (and not in a good way)…

• Bacon Haikus (giggle!)
• Bacon Salt, the never ending quest to make everything taste like bacon
• Bacon Cupcakes from Buzz Bakery on Cupcakes Take The Cake
• Hardening of the arteries via Paula Deen: Lady’s Brunch Burger (snort!)
• The Bacon Show: One bacon recipe per day, every day, forever (bless you, Bacon Show, bless you)
• Homemade Bacon Vodka
• The Bacon Cocktail
• David Lebovitz’s Candied Bacon Ice Cream
• The Bacon Cookbook: More Than 150 Recipes from Around the World for Everyone’s Favorite Food
• Seduced By Bacon: Recipes and Lore about America’s Favorite Indulgence
• Forget that new car smell! Now there’s Bacon Air Freshener (snort!)
• But nothing beats a good old B.L.T

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Don’t you love when you cook something for the first time and find, upon taste testing, that it needs no tweaking? You just get it perfect, right from the get-go. That’s what we experienced with this dish. Add a little of this, a little of that – and phwwm! – all the flavors join together in one big happy dance, needing nothing further from you. That’s when you step back from the stove and join in the dance.

This dish will make you happy. The kind of happy that makes you take your shoes off and wiggle your toes. Of course, when working with Chanterelle mushrooms and smoked Mangalitsa bacon it’s hard to go wrong, so prepare for shoe removal.

Chanterelle And Smoked Bacon Linguine

4 strips of good quality bacon, cut into 1 inch pieces
1 pound Chanterelle mushrooms, sliced
1/2 cup white wine
2 tablespoons heavy cream
Approximately 1 pound linguine
1 tablespoon Italian parsley, chopped
Parmesan cheese
Kosher salt

In a large pot, bring salted water to a boil; add pasta and cook until tender. In a saucepan, sauté bacon until browned. Add mushrooms and cook until soft. Pour in wine and simmer until the alcohol has cooked off. Add the cream and season to taste with salt.

Drain pasta. Toss pasta with mushroom bacon mixture and chopped parsley.

Plate and serve with grated Parmesan on top.

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I’m ashamed to say that my gifts to Barnaby this year were a bit self-serving: a fancy waffle iron and an outdoor electric smoker. So far he’s like a kid in a candy store. Smoking trout, salmon, oysters, turkey breast, beef brisket, but the best so far – and by far – is the Mangalitsa bacon.

We’d written before about this Hungarian heirloom pig (also called Wooly Pig due to its curly hair), but it’s so delicious it warrants another article. Once the preferred pig in Hungary (known there as Mangalica) for its fatty and flavorful meat the breed died down to only a couple of hundred due to farmers who were raising leaner and larger litter-producing pigs. Who wants a skinny pig? Isn’t that an oxymoron? Fortunately, in the early 90’s they started to make a comeback and their numbers are now well in the tens of thousands.

We all know fat equals flavor, sad for the thighs and arteries, but true. That’s what makes Mangalitsa so special. Because fat is a vehicle for flavor it takes on smoke and seasonings like none other, making for some of the best, most flavorful sausages, cured hams, lardo, and as we found out first hand…home smoked bacon.

Last summer we sought out Heath Putnam, owner of Wooly Pig, the only company in the Western Hemisphere with Mangalitsa breeding stock. From him we purchased various cuts to try, including a heavily marbled belly from a Mangalitsa cross-breed, thinking we’d use it to flavor dishes such as a hearty split pea soup. Then the smoker entered our lives and our bacon eating ways reached a whole new level. Creamy and intensely flavored this is beyond any bacon you’ve ever tasted.

More on Mangalitsa:

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I truly am a sucker for Brussels sprouts. And chanterelle mushrooms are about the best things since sliced bread, and mushrooms generally are not on my list of top-loved foods. Then, there’s bacon. Ahhh, bacon. I may possibly name my first born Bacon, I love it so much. The smell of it cooking is about the only thing that can rouse me out of a deep morning sleep.

When these three lovelies combine the angels sing. Not only because the result is so good, but because it’s so darn easy. With all the other dishes being prepared, and everyone jostling for cooking space in the kitchen on Thanksgiving day, this can be whipped up lickity split (especially if you do the slicing and dicing the day before).

Bacon Brussels Sprouts With Chanterelle Mushrooms

8-12 oz    brussel sprouts, wedged
1/4 lb       bacon, julienned
2 oz         onion, white, small dice
1 oz         carrot, small dice
1 oz         celery, small dice
4-8 oz      chanterelle mushrooms, quartered
1 oz         beef or chicken stock
Salt to taste

In medium to large pan, on med-high heat, cook bacon stirring nearly constantly until mostly crispy. Add mirepoix (onion, carrot, celery) and cook until almost brown on edges. Add sprouts and about 1 teaspoon salt, and cook until nearly soft–if they aren’t juicy and just want to sear, add 1 oz of stock. Add chanterelles and cook until juices evaporate. Season with salt to taste. Also delicious with 1 teaspoon of lemon juice and 1 teaspoon of thyme leaves.

Serves about 4

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What better way to wrap up Tomato Week than with a B.L.T.? Since all the tomato recipes this week have been vegetarian or vegan, I thought I’d end with a carnivorous bang! Bacon.

Nothing goes better with tomato than bacon. Well, actually many things go well with tomato, it’s just a really good excuse to eat bacon! The way I like to figure it is this: a serving each of fruit and veggie is sure to cancel out the badness of the bacon, so really, it’s kinda of a healthy meal. Right? Ok, I know that’s a crock, at least I tried.

The best B.L.T., in my opinion, consists of thick-sliced bacon, tender lettuce, and plump and juicy fresh-from-your-garden tomatoes – not the poor anemic ones found in big supermarkets. If you’re going to do it right, you gotta do it right. I also like mine on a good artisan bread, such as ciabatta (shown), then lightly toasted just enough to shred the top of your mouth.

Thank you, tomato, for being perfect in about everything! And thank you, bacon, for…well, for being bacon.

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Legend has it that during World War II American soldiers in Rome would bring their Italian friends eggs and bacon and ask them to make a pasta dish, thus becoming pasta alla carbonara. Another legend claims that carbonara, a derivative of the word carbon in Italian, was made for charcoal workers. Who really knows how eggs and bacon became transformed into a distinctively Roman pasta dish.

One thing is for sure, with the bacon grease that’s used it is certainly a meal hearty enough for a soldier or charcoal worker. So if you’re on a low-fat or low-carb (or both) diet, you may as well stop reading right here. Shut your computer down and go get an apple. If you love bacon, then take my hand and let me lead you down the long path of gluttony. It’s a fine journey.

In Rome salted pork jowl is usually used, but as it’s difficult to find in the States, pancetta or a smoky bacon works just as well.

Spaghetti alla Carbonara
For 6 servings.

½ pound pancetta or bacon
4 garlic gloves
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
¼ cup dry white wine
2 large fresh eggs
¼ cup cream (optional- we didn’t use it but you could add it if you want extra creaminess)
¼ cup romano cheese
½ cup freshly grated parmigiano-reggiano cheese
Fresh ground black pepper
2 tablespoons chopped parsley
1 ¼ pounds of spaghetti
3/4 or 1 package peas (optional – I know it’s not traditional to add peas, but I thought it would be fun to mix it up a bit).

1. Cut the pancetta or bacon into ¼ wide slices.
2. Lightly mash the garlic with the flat end of a chef’s knife, enough to split it and loosed the skin, which you want to toss. Put the garlic and olive oil into a small sauté pan and heat over medium high until garlic turns a deep golden brown. Remove and throw away the garlic.
3. Put the pancetta slices into the pan, and cook until lightly brown and crisp at the edges. Slowly add the white wine, and let it cook a minute or two until the alcohol burns off.
4. Break the 2 eggs into the bowl in which you will be serving. Beat them with a fork then add the grated cheeses, a healthy grinding of pepper, and the chopped parsley. Mix thoroughly.
5. Briefly reheat the pancetta over high heat then remove from heat.
6. Add a small amount of the pancetta drippings to a small amount of the just cooked spaghetti and mix well. Add to the bowl and toss rapidly, taking care not to cook the eggs. Toss in the rest of the pasta, cream (if using), pancetta with its drippings, and peas, and toss thoroughly.
7. Serve at once.

I prepared this recipe without the added cream. If you prefer a creamier sauce add the cream or another egg or two.

Note: I’ve never had problems using raw eggs, which can transmit salmonella, as I’ve always used the freshest ones I can find. But if you are concerned, or will be serving to young children, elderly people or those with a weakened immune system, you may wish to skip the raw eggs and add cream instead.

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I know, I know, the last couple of days I’ve featured some strange foods, and today is no exception. Today I found an interesting article in New York Magazine about a “bacon-infused-bourbon-and-maple-syrup cocktail.” All together now…”EEEEEW!!”

Now don’t get me wrong. I love bacon. Like top-ten-favorite-foods love. I love it wrapped around asparagus, I love BLTs, I love it with eggs and hash browns on a Sunday morning. In fact, because of bacon I could never be a vegetarian. The only time I went off bacon was in the 8th grade when I raised a pig. It didn’t end well, but that’s a whole other story (one that would require a bunch of tissue and a few shots of tequila). But when I stumbled upon the bacon cocktail article I thought, “Who, pray tell, would think to infuse bourbon with maple syrup and bacon?”

Here are three images that come to mind: large masculine men, NASCAR or some extreme sport, lots of chest pounding and a whole bunch of imagination.

Clearly this gives the “Gateway Meat” a whole new meaning!

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