Post-
Baconism As the bacon fad comes to an end, here’s how you should cook By Ari LeVaux
L
ooking back, the early years of the bacon craze seem like a time of innocence. We took it for granted that any problem, culinary or otherwise, could be solved with various preparations of pig belly. The thrill of realizing we could eat bacon anywhere, in anything, any time of day, as much as we like, was thrilling. As long as man has hunted and confined pigs, he has probably found ways to obsess over and fetishize bacon. But these days we have the means at our collective disposal to obsess over bacon like never before, and we do. I never joined a bacon-of-the-month club, or wore any bacon-themed personal accessories, but there was a time in my life when I began most meals — breakfast, lunch and dinner — by chopping slivers from a brick of pork belly. And it was awesome. Bacon is clearly a wonderful thing. But when I began entertaining the possibility that it isn’t the only thing, some interesting culinary
Allen Duffy illustration
38 INLANDER MARCH 7, 2013
doors opened. Part of the problem with bacon everywhere, all the time, is that unless you’re investing in clean, quality bacon, you could be exposing yourself to some questionable karma — industrial hog farms that are home to gross exploitation and pollution — not to mention antibiotics and other substances found in factory farmed pork, such as the pork-fattening hormone ractopamine, widely used in the U.S. but banned in many countries, including Russia, which recently announced it will no longer import U.S. pork. And even if you’re unconcerned about chemicals, pollution, dietary fat or the feelings of pigs, sooner or later you still might find yourself wondering if there’s something else out there. Something different. So lets entertain the notion, if only for the sake of argument, of satisfaction at a post-bacon culture. Bacon offers three basic