Sounds like you can balance your doshas with bacon and chili powder alone then, just by varying parameters!
Also sounds remarkable like medieval humour theory. Hildegard von Bingen would probably approve of this approach.
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Good thinking! I think the crispy, sweetened bacon straws in a spicy Bloody Mary mentioned farther up might be the epitome of dosha calibration!
Don’t need to tell me twice. Off I go!
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We might be using the same word (bacon) for two very different things (and please forgive me if you already know this). Here’s typical American bacon:
Typical European bacon, in my experience, has a higher muscle to fat ratio, like this:
Cooking the former short of crispy, it’s difficult to produce something that isn’t limp and soggy. Cooking the latter to crispy leads, as you say, to something resembling shoe leather or charcoal.
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I do know the difference but thanks for highlighting it. My experience with the latter has definitely coloured my preferences for the former.
I do indeed like British back bacon to be even softer but even streaky bacon shouldn’t be so crisp that is loses all its taste. Browning, yes, but not enough crisping that it loses all its juices.
I do realise that this is all personal taste of course. But now you have me hankering for thick-cut British back bacon, something which is almost impossible to get either in Norway or in Germany…
All I want is a bacon buttie with brown sauce!
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my british mother-in-law always referred to the bacon here as “streaky” and compare it unfavorably to the meatier british bacon.
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Restaurant cooking wise there’s actually a “correct” way to cook streaky bacon. The fat should be fully rendered so it’s not greasy, and the meat browned and crispy but not brittle or hard.
If you pick a piece up by the end, it will stand out straight without bending. But it will flex rather than break if you bend it. It will break cleanly when bitten into and the fat portion has a very similar texture to the lean.
All together it is bacon that is crisp, but not dry.
With back bacon the little chunk of belly at the bottom should be cooked like that, but the loin portion gets dry very easily.
Streaky bacon over that way tends to be a bit of a bargain product. My Irish cousins compare it unfavorably to fast food bacon. I have heard it referred to as gas station food.
Seems to have a strong connotation of divorced men and poverty over there.
But they run out and get American bacon about as fast as they land and complain about not having that quality of streaky bacon at home.
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We see both kinds and call the American-style cut ‘streaky’ as well, while the cut with the loin is usually called middle bacon. The quality is about the same which just means it’s a matter of horses for courses and choosing the right bacon for the use case. Middle bacon is my go-to for an FEB while streaky bacon is for where fat and flavour are more important, like a coq au vin. As @DukeTrout points out, cooking middle bacon to full crispness is a big mistake.
They’re both good. It’s the watery stuff in plastic (of both kinds) that I hate. Like really hate.
YES!
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And I’m about to put a pork loin into some brine to make myself a piece of peameal bacon like I get in Canada. After the wet brine you roll it in crushed dried yellow peas, hence the name.
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I’ve found the microwave is a good way to get that with streaky bacon, a folded piece of kitchen paper on a plate, lay your bacon flat, cover with another folded piece of kitchen paper, 45 sec/1min seconds, then flip the whole parcel, and another 45 sec to 1 minute (time depends on microwave power), the one disadvantage is all of the grease is unavailable afterwards, but if you want a quick buttie…
I’ve never done it with back bacon, but here’s how this butcher does it:
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Microwave all the way! I have a plastic microwave dish for doing my rashers. I only do it with the streaky ones, normal rashers don’t microwave so well, only fatty ones.
For the record I use Spanish rashers for this purpose rather than Irish, though I can get fatty, streaky Irish ones. The Spanish are geniuses with fatty pig meat though. Fight me!
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The spanish are good, but Italians are neck and neck, lardo di colonatta, n’duja and culatello come to mind… need to stop thinking about food, still a few hours til lunch.
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Not gonna die on that hill! I’m sure you are right. I guess I’ve just been in Spain a lot more than Italy. Italian friends sometimes get me to say something in my “Italian” so they can laugh at my funny Spanish accent.
I can pretty much only order and buy food in Italian.
Priorities.
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I like those priorities 
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I find microwave bacon subtly disturbing.
It’s probably because browning can’t really happen in there.
It’s great for quick sandwich bacon though. And if I’m putting bacon in a cooked dish I’ll cook it part of the way in the nuker before cutting it up.
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Yeah, the caramelization is a sad loss, but in a sandwich it’s hard to notice…
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For collectors, the Pyrex sweet spot runs from the 1950s to the late 1970s, when the dishes were still made from borosilicate glass.
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The post about Pyrex reminded me, I’ve been meaning to tell you: I got these after seeing this post and share the utter lack of regret! They are SO handy and convenient and useful and easily stored. Great addition to the kitchen toolkit. Thanks!
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You’re welcome! I keep finding new uses, even after all these years. Very versatile!
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European Pyrex is still borosilicate. And there are some smaller brands in the US that trade on still using it.
We have a lot of old pyrex and Corningware around. The difference is absolutely worth the effort to track down. None of the newer stuff i’ve purchased over the years survived more that a couple of years. Not bowls or measuring cups, not baking dishes.
All cracked, chipped, or esploded. And they tend get a scratched up very fast, markings wear off.
But we have bake ware from the 50’s through the early 80’s that are in pretty much perfect condition aside from a bit of carbon buildup. For whatever that’s not an issue on the Corningware, stuff looks like it just came out the store.
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