More on pork

OK, so as Stephanie has pointed out to me, I erred in the fact that obviously PORK is the magical animal, bacon is one of the many holy gifts that it has bestowed upon man. I am suitably chastened. However, I'll chalk it up to being doped up on oxycodon that caused my oversight.

As to bacon - it's probably the most delicious of all meats. I heartily maintain that anything that has bacon tastes better than the same dish cooked without bacon. I was worshipping at the altar of this magical food when I was rendering down some lardons (that's fancy French cook-talk for 1/4" chopped up pieces of bacon) and getting them nice and crispy, to put mix into my mac and cheese.

The mistake most people make is that they get their pan real hot while they cook the bacon, and they end up scorching up both the bacon and the bacon fat, which is pretty much a kitchen sin. Granted, some people like their bacon practically burnt (*ahem*Sean*ahem*) but not me. So I cook my lardons over medium-low, so all the tasty fat gets oozed out of them, and it takes a while more to cook (almost 10-15 minutes) but they get nice and crispy and tasty. Then, I drain off all the fat and store it in the fridge in a Rubbermaid. For what, you may ask? That's a story for next week.

So the moral of the story is this: respect your bacon! Cook it no higher than medium so you can get all the tasty fat rendered off and stored use at another time. Cook it no higher than medium so you can get it nice and crispy without it being completely cindered. Love your bacon!