A few months ago, I had a pretty clear picture of what bacon was. It was the striped, preferably fatty, lightly smoked and salted meat from the belly or back of the pig, which, when added to pretty much any dish, made it into a much desired culinary experience.
In the last few months, this site, and my related research has done much to educate me on the concept of bacon. I gradually (and might I say, reluctantly) have come to the conclusion that baconness is not a boolean (either/or) variable. Not only are there degrees og baconnes, but these degrees seem to not be the same for everyone. Wow, what a shock.
Having come to that conclusion, I have decided to try and define some bordercases that might be used to clarify, what, in my unique palate and bacontarian mind, constitutes bacon, and perhaps even more importantly, what does not. To achieve this, I decided that instead of constantly searching for better bacon, by buying, trying and enjoying a variety of meats that all, without exception, fall well within my definition of bacon, I would spend some time clarifying ome interesting border cases.
This week: pancetta
So friday afternoon, I casually stepped into the local super-supermarket, the one with the butcher in the back, and ordered up 8 slices of pancetta. The first thing I noticed, which set them apart from my conservative view of what bacon is supposed to be was the thinness of the slices as well as the roundness. These were definetely sliced much thinner than the way I would usually enjoy my bacon, and the roundness, is, well it’s wrong. Bacon belongs in long slices and/or in tiny bits, crumbled over a salad, or included in my biksemad.
Open-minded as always, I refrained from concluding that these 2 minor issues were enough to ban the pancetta from the ranks of bacon for ever. After all, the thickness of the slices was decided by a danish supermarket butcher, and the roundness was something I could conceivably live with.
Having spent the next ½ hour wandering the isles of the supermarket thinking about suitable test-scenarios, I decided on a 2-pronged strategy.
First I would try the pancetta in a meal that struck as eminantly suitable for the thin, round, seemingly heavily salted nature of the pancetta. So last night I invited myself to visit my friend Jens for a night of food, beer and installing useless stuff on computers. The menu for the night: Fried beef patties topped with a slice of pancetta, some soft fried onion rings, and fried mushrooms. A side of greek salad to make it slightly more healthy, and a bit of my current favourite beer, Kozel Dark.
In this combination the pancetta was wonderful. The highly salted flavour really combined well with the beef patty and the fried mushrooms, to create a wonderful, complex flavour. The thinness of the slices meant that there was none of the toughness of thicker sliced bacon, making this easy to eat, and keeping the excellent feel of the burger as the main influence of the dish. In this capacity I really warmed to pancetta as an ingredient in other foods, and a fine pork meat at that. But I went to bed without having made up my mind on whether it was quite within my range of bacons.
So this morning, I prepared the ultimate test. The one thing, that in my mind, will always conclusively prove if something is bacon or not. The dish that bacon was originally meant for. The reason, the god of foodstuffs (in my personal panopticon) even invented the pig and the chicken (and some would say the beans, tomatoes and potatoes as well), the English breakfast. Since I was still pretty full from the massive friday, beef and pancetta dinner, I decided to keep it light. 2 fried eggs (sunny side up), 2 slices of pancetta, fried, and for reference, one slice of fried, ham (the boiled, bland variety). Served with toasted bread, and a cup of the finest illy espresso. If anything deserves the term bacon, it simply has to taste fine in combination with a couple of fried eggs. I heated up a small frying pan, dumped the pancetta and the ham on it and proceeded to watch in awe as the pancetta was pretty much done in all of 30 seconds (thin slices do have definite benefits). I removed the pancetta, let the ham fry for a little while longer (on both sides), and proceeded to fry the eggs in the fat from the pancetta and ham. This was the first warning as to the baconness of the pancetta. There was almost no grease on the frying pan!!!
Luckily I had anticipated this and decided to use a non-stick frying pan (which is not normally something I owuld condone when frying bacon), so the eggs came out perfectly anyway. Voilá, a nice serving of eggs and “bacon”. Dig in.
My verdict. Pancetta is far too salty for this kind of dish, completely overshadowing the eggness. The fact that it is salted, and wind-dried rather than smoked and salted, means it has far too much flavour for this sort of dish. I actually had to eat the eggs with the ham (rather than the pancetta), and use the pancetta as a very tasty meat for a small buttered sandwich.
As a conlcusion, and based on my palate and bacontarians ideology, I have to say that while pancetta is definitely a tasty and useful pork in a number of recipes, I cannot call it bacon. Especially the saltiness, and the lack of good fat (due probably mostly to the thin slicing) disqualifies this meat and puts it firmly in the category “Not Quite Bacon but damn tasty anyway”.
QED!
I can understand tkrag’s skepticism re: the baconness of pancetta, but consider if you will that it may simply have been an error on the danish butcher’s part that put you off. Pancetta is an ingredient bacon rather than a standalone bacon. I would recommend making the same english breakfast this sunday, but substitute 1-1.5cm cubes of pancetta for the paper thin slices. They won’t cook through quite so quickly, and will render a bit more fat. Consider buying a whole pancetta (2-3kg), less of the delicious salty fat will have been trimmed off by your butcher (he cuts meat for a living, it’s easy for that to get out of hand, the next thing you know he’s whittled the meat away entirely and all that’s left is bits).
Bacon – loved by all. When toddlers are squirming in their highchairs struggling with words like “mama” and “wawa” for a drink water, my nephew at the age of one belts out “bacon” as the smell surrounding him one Sunday morning. All of you would be very proud to have Garret as your nephew having the first word out of his mouth being clearly and perfectly pronounced, “BACON”! Poor Mom – I am sure there is some heart-break to Mama or Dada not being the first word.