Main Street Meats butcher Milton White prepares for the day prior to opening the shop on the Southside.Bacon Musings by Homer Simpson
* Lisa: “I’m going to become a vegetarian.” Homer: “Does that mean you’re not going to eat any pork?” “Yes.” “Bacon?” “Yes, Dad.” “Ham?” “Dad, all those meats come from the same animal.” “Right, Lisa, some wonderful, magical animal!”” * “Pork chops and bacon, my two favorite animals.” * “When you’re in my house you shall do as I do and believe who I believe in. So, Bart, butter your bacon.” * Homer: “I’ll have the smiley face breakfast special. Uhh, but could you add a bacon nose? Plus bacon hair, bacon mustache, five o’clock shadow made of bacon bits and a bacon body.” Waitress: “How about I just shove a pig down your throat? (Homer looks excited) “I was kidding.” Homer: “Fine, but the bacon man lives in a bacon house!” Source: royalbaconsociety.com
To quote Homer Simpson: “Mmm bacon.”
Need we say more?
Bacon was invented as a way to keep meat from spoiling in the days before we had refrigerators, so technically, that means we don’t really need to make bacon anymore.
Stop screaming. No one is sugggesting for a second that we quit making bacon. At this point, we simply couldn’t because we love it. And why do we love it?
Because, well, bacon.
So it’s hardly a shock that bacon is a big part of what the folks at Main Street Meats do.
“Oh goodness, yes. It’s definitely something we make sure we keep on the shelves,” says butcher Milton White.
The method for curing bacon at Main Street, where they sell about 100 pounds of the stuff each week, is pretty standard — a rub and lots of smoking — but they use three different cuts, which can impact the flavors, he says.
“We use a dry rub and hickory smoke it, but we make it out of the belly, American-style, and also the loin, which is more an English- or Canadian-style, and sometimes we use the jowel,” he explains.
At Dipped Fresh in Coolidge Park, owners Cynthia Wood and Antonia Poland believe just about anything tastes better if dipped in chocolate or caramel — and that includes bacon.
The No. 1 thing they dip into the chocolate they make are strawberries, but right behind is bacon. Yep, chocolate-covered bacon — “and people love it,” Poland says.
The shop uses center-cut meat from the pork belly that is lean and somewhat chewy.
“People like the consistency. It’s like caramel almost and not what they expect,” Poland says.
“I had a vegetarian who hadn’t eaten meat in 19 years come in and had to try it. I said, ‘Don’t do it,'” she laughs. “I don’t want to convert people, but they feel like they have to try it. He loved it.”
Dipped Fresh customers get 12 pieces of chocolate-covered bacon per order and Wood says the shop sells about a dozen orders each week.
They’ve also sprinkled bacon on their chocolate-covered strawberries and put it on a chocolate-dipped ice cream bar.
“A man ate two of them and wanted a third and I could not stomach giving him a third,” Poland says. “They were massive.”
Even a butcher like White at Main Street Meats gets into baking bacon; in his case, it’s his bacon-chocolate chip cookies.
Contact Barry Courter at bcourter@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6354.