Bacon becoming trendy
Caroline:
April 29th, 2007
There was a time when sausages were pretty revolting and were only eaten by those on a very low budget. Nowadays good sausages have become fit for the gourmet and it looks as if bacon is going that way too. People are no longer prepared to put up with the rubbish which shrinks to almost nothing and leaves that grim white scum when cooked. Sales of top-notch bacon have increased by more than 30% in a year and it not only appears on the breakfast table but on the restaurant menu in pasta dishes such as carbonara and, one of my favourites, wrapped around monkfish. The supermarkets all have their own premium brands but my prize has to go to the Scottish producer Ramsay of Carluke. They have a website where you can place an order online, not only for bacon but sausages, hams and black pudding too.
April 30th, 2007 at 10:44 am
No constructive criticism is possible for this post, when the statistics contained within are seemingly plucked from thin air - sales up 30% - in which shops?and which study? I’ve bought low-price bacon in the past and have never noticed any “white-scum”…a mystery! The only opinion in this blog seems to be an advert for Ramsat of Carluke, although I am not sure whether you are being sarcastic about your prize going to the producer and their website. May I point out that the bacon appearing “in pasta dishes such as carbonara” is most likely to be pancetta, an Italian pork belly bacon that is salt cured and therefore provides a different flavour to “breakfast table” bacon.
April 30th, 2007 at 4:05 pm
The statistics are not in fact plucked from thin air but from an article in the Times - http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1690442.ece
As for the white scum, Launceston butcher Philip Warren explains, ” Most bacon these days is ‘wet’ bacon, injected with curing solutions, which produces the white scum you get when you cook it.” If you google “bacon white scum” I hope you will agree from the myriad of hits that this phenomenon is not some figment of my imagination!
I won’t take issue with your use of pancettta in a Carbonara - that’s what I use myself as you get a much better texture - but you will find plenty recipes out there that use bacon as a substitute.
April 30th, 2007 at 5:12 pm
Contrary to Sam I knew exactly what you meant Caroline, that white scummy stuff is horrid! An enjoyable blog as usual, it made me hungry for some bacon… then I went to breakfast in college the next morning, and it was all scum scum scum, the scum.
April 30th, 2007 at 8:37 pm
I have since clicked on the link to the Times and indeed there was the statistic. I felt that in your blog it would have been appropriate to provide a reference for this statistic or at least mention that it was from an article that you had read. As to the white scum I obviously have been lucky in eating cheap scum-free bacon!
April 30th, 2007 at 9:50 pm
There are statistics dotted around all over iblog. I feel that given that our blog posts are quite short it would detract from the point if we had to prove that we didn’t make it up each time we mentioned a statistic. By all means if anyone is interested to know they can leave a comment, but I don’t think it should always be necessary in such casual posts to cite sources.
April 30th, 2007 at 10:31 pm
Then again, its do damned easy to post a link, since you already have the page open in your browser anyway…and in Wordpress it is about a click away.
May 1st, 2007 at 8:54 am
It’s not about easy and difficult. I’m sure Caroline didn’t leave out a link because she was being lazy, but because she didn’t feel it was necessary…
May 1st, 2007 at 3:30 pm
Thank you Rushda and Virgil for your kind words. I’m glad Virgil has encountered the “scum”. Perhaps like his recipe for carbonara, Sam’s “low-price” bacon is a tad more upmarket than the average! As for Alex and his remark that it is so “damned easy” to include a link, that of course is true, provided you are reading the Times online and not, as I was, the actual newspaper. I only bothered to look up the link because Sam seemed to doubt the veracity of the source. As Rushda says, it would detract from the point if blogs were peppered with citations of sources. I seem to recall the guidelines mentioning an upper word limit of 200 words and whilst some bloggers seem to disregard this, I try to bear in mind that I am not producing some scholarly dissertation complete with footnotes and bibliography but a short, pithy and hopefully interesting blog!