when I get around to it, I plan on reading Sarah Katherine Lewis's Sex and Bacon:
The Bacon Quotient
There's never enough bacon.
When you go to a restaurant and order breakfast you usually only receive three or four measly little strips, book-ended by far too much toast and a greasy mound of semi-raw hash browns. Even ordering an additional side of bacon only makes six or eight strips, total. And these are strips the size of Band-Aids, carbonized into chalky blackened mouthfuls of bacon-flavored charcoal briquette! So not only do you not get enough bacon in restaurants, you generally don't feel satisfied by the bacon you're having. The whole thing's disappointing. You might as well order the fruit and yogurt plate. It's not like you're going to feel good about your breakfast anyway.
I was sick of never getting enough quality bacon. So one day, I decided to see how much bacon would be enough. I knew it was definitely more than four strips, and almost certainly more than eight. I knew the bacon would have to be good. I was pretty sure enough bacon would be a lot.
The thing was, I had the day off. Not much to do. I had a big unopened package of bacon in the refrigerator, and a cast iron skillet on my range-top, scrubbed out and seasoned with oil. It seemed like if I was ever going to find out how much bacon was enough, the only way to get at that knowledge would be to simply start frying strips of pork in my pan. To eat them. And then to stop, once the crucial bacon quotient - the BQ - had been achieved. It would be elegant, a simple Scientific Method two-step. I considered taking notes, then decided the note-taking would interfere with my experience of the project. I needed to be able to pay attention. The BQ could be a subtle point, easily missed. I couldn't afford to take that chance.
I started out with a cold pan on my stovetop. I laid five strips of bacon across the bottom of the pan, pushing them together and using a fork to arrange them, neat and flat, into broad pink-and-white pork ribbons. They were slightly too long for the pan, and their edges curled up on each side. I was mildly annoyed by the curled edges - it didn t look precise, and I was worried the strips would cook unevenly - but I used my fork to press the too-long edges against the sides of the skillet and they adhered with their own fat quite nicely. It would have to do.
I turned the burner on to Medium-High. Actually just past Medium. There's a certain bacon-friendly setting my hand knows better than my brain, because if I just kind of flick the knob in a certain way it goes to Perfect Bacon Temperature and my bacon cooks into delicious salty crusty strips of goodness, but if I over-think the temperature my pan ends up too hot or too cool. So I just let my hand find the exact right spot a twist of the wrist, loose and casual - and in about three minutes the bacon started to creak as the brine in which it had been packed burned off against the hot cast-iron.
About a minute after that I smelled it. The bacon smell. That rich, caramelized scent of sizzling salt-pork belly. That unfair smell. The one that tells you that a double order-bacon with your starch-heavy meal, plus another side of bacon - isn t enough. The one that vegetarians shamefully make allowances for, asking for bacon in restaurants while maintaining pristinely meat-free homes.
Each strip's fatty sections swelled and curled coyly in the pan, making seductive popping noises. "Shhhhhhh," the bacon whispered, promising discretion. I was hungry and excited, an ardent lover. Finally, enough bacon! I couldn't wait for the first batch to finish.
I opened my cabinet and took out a dinner plate, which I lined with a double layer of paper toweling. Then I speared each strip of bacon with my fork, and laid them side by side on their paper towel bed. I finished by gently tucking another paper towel over the bacon strips, as if wishing them a good night's rest and pleasant dreams. Grease-flowers blossomed as I pressed the towel down, careful as a mama seeing to her babies.
Turning back to the grease-coated skillet, I used my fingers to lay five more strips down. I believe in touching bacon. I am a meat-toucher. Don't get me wrong - I wouldn't use raw meat to clean my countertops, and I wouldn't lick uncooked pork or suck the drippings from those weird little sanitary napkin thingies they put under cut-up fryers in the Styrofoam trays to absorb the smelly chicken water. But I believe in touching meat - using my fingers to lay down bacon or dredge chunks of stew meat in flour. If meat were really that dangerous, wouldn't we all be sick constantly from eating it? Frankly, it seemed to me that supermarket mushrooms - raised in shit, then dumped out into trays to be pawed through by dozens of indifferently-washed shoppers - were likely filthier that nice clean meat, wrapped in butcher's plastic and consistently refrigerated.
Or maybe I just liked touching meat. The cool slap of it, and the soft meat-grease on my fingertips. The smell of it - feral, coppery, intimate, oily. The watery blood. The raw animal meat-fiber striations of beef; smooth shiny egg-yolky chicken breasts; even the little worms of raw ground beef were sensual in their own way when you slapped them into hamburger-sized pads or used your fingers to squish eggs and cracker crumbs and ketchup into meatloaves. So I used my fingers to lay the next series of bacon strips down, peeling them away from the main block of candy-striped meat with my nails.
This time they began crackling and pushing up into little pork bumps and valleys immediately - the salty water hissing, the grease from the previous batch spattering slightly - and I felt pinpricks of hot oil on my hands and forearms. I welcomed the tiny splashes of pain. They didn't hurt badly. I licked my wrist, cooling the burn there and tasting exquisite bacon essence in the drop of hot fat on my tongue. I rinsed my hands perfunctorily.
Turning to the nest of sleeping bacon on my counter, I cruelly plucked off their greasy paper-towel coverlet. Incited to violence by the brief flutter of bacon-fat I'd lapped from my own wrist, I crammed an entire strip of cooked bacon into my mouth. And another. And another. Standing, I gobbled bacon. Bits of browned pork fell from my lips to the floor. I was doing it! I was doing the experiment! I was finding the BQ!
I ate silently and rapidly until all five strips were gone. Then I used a licked finger to get the tiny fragments of bacon stuck to the paper towel, pressing my fingertips into the greasy bed and licking the particles from my own living, uncharred skin. It was so good.
I gazed lustfully at the bacon in the skillet, half-done and seductively disarrayed, dressed in the hot fat of the pan's previous occupancy.
Using my fork, I speared each strip and flipped each one over, arranging them into a neat straight chorus line of sizzling pork. I used the tines of my fork to press the white nodules of pig-fat firmly against the hot iron interior of the pan. The rich silky veins of fat snapped and seared brown as the pink meat of the bacon contracted and darkened similarly. It was beautiful, like watching a flower burst open in stop-motion cinematography. The aroma of bacon hung in the air maddeningly.
After a few minutes, I moved the second five strips of bacon from the skillet to the plate of paper towels. I didn't bother covering them with another towel. This batch was a mite over-done. Besides, I didn't think they d last long enough to appreciate my solicitude. They lay on the plate naked and stacked against each other. And that smell. It was engorging; inciting. It was as if the first plate of bacon were merely an appetizer. The second was the entree. The meat of the matter, so to speak.
I carried the plate to the table. Sat. Gobbled bacon. The plate was empty before I settled into my chair. Which was fine, because I really needed to start the third pan of bacon. I got up again and returned to the range, casually arranging another layer of paper towels on top of the first two grease-sodden ones.
I realized I felt happy - really happy. I hadn't had enough bacon, not yet - but I was on the track of my BQ, and that felt good. And I still had over half a package of raw bacon left. For that matter, I had another whole package in the freezer. It would be short work to defrost it under warm running water, if it came to that. I sang as I laid five more strips in the pan of lightly smoking oil.
I fried and ate bacon for two and a half hours in back-and-forth ballet between range, counter-top, and table. My feet slid along the floor noiselessly - I was grease-skating in my socks, gliding like a swan. With every breath I inhaled slippery clouds of bacon fat, transformed into a smoky haze by the alchemy of my cast-iron skillet and the heat of my stovetop. I was in the fat and the fat was in me, all over me, deep in my creases like a tender lover. Inner had become outer. It was all the same. It was glorious and sinful, a gluttonous greasy rampage, a disaster, a glistening salty triumph.
The BQ was technically reached at three pounds (uncooked weight), but I made sure to eat the remaining pound in the package just to ensure the accuracy of my results. I didn t want to be mistaken to think that I d reached the BQ, only to realize an hour later that I d been premature and that I d achieved a false BQ based on my desire to terminate the project. I had to be sure. The last pound of bacon was deliberate and labored, but at long last I finished cooking and devouring the entire family-sized four-pound package. I folded the greasy plastic wrapping into quarters and discarded it into my kitchen garbage can, replacing the lid with a sense of completion and purpose. I was done. I had finally had Enough Bacon.