The Great Bacon Odyssey: One Burger, Ten Strips Of Bacon!

Oh yeah! This burger from GeekDad is right up my alley. The chef used uncured bacon to keep the salt level tolerable to his circulatory system. Then, he chased it down with a very stout beer--the Dogfish Head 90-minute IPA--to help cut the richness of the fat.

My wife would love the burger but pass on the beer.

The Great Bacon Odyssey was prepared as follows:

I began by putting down some aluminum foil on a kitchen counter, because I didn’t want to have to scrub down the counter afterward to get rid of the raw bacon smell. I created a lattice, weaving five vertical strips with five horizontal. I then placed the perfectly ordinary, roughly 1/3lb hamburger my lovely wife had made in the center of the lattice. I tried to neatly enclose the burger in the lattice, but the bottom became a bit of a mess regardless. The top looked very nice, though, if I do say so myself (see the picture, above).

I cooked it using my oven’s broiler, the burger set on a rack over a Pyrex dish to catch rendered fat. Burgers of course taste better on a grill, but consider how many flareups ten strips of bacon would create and you’ll see why I chose not to go that route. I had to trim a few of the strips’ ends when cooking the bottom side, because they got a wee bit too close to the heating element and set off all the smoke detectors in my home. At most, though, I cut off a half-strip’s worth (and probably less), so my experiment was not terribly compromised.

And then I put it on a bun, with an excellent Dogfish Head 90-Minute IPA to wash it down, and I proceeded to eat the whole thing. It was really, really good! The burger was probably the juiciest burger I’ve ever eaten, which I suppose makes perfect sense. Probably due to the bacon being uncured, I was able to stand the saltiness, leaving the richness of the pork fat the only obstacle to consumption. The hoppiness of my chosen beer helped cut the richness of the fat enough that I was able to eat the burger in less time than it took my kids to eat their bacon-wrapped hot dogs. And I even had room for corn and a little dessert afterward.

To read the whole article, click on the blog post title or copy and paste this: http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2010/07/the-great-bacon-odyssey-one-burger-ten-strips-of-bacon/#ixzz0t6FjWQSB

Hat tip to David McComb. Thanks for the tip!