The Annals of Bacon Research

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Issue 3: Pickled Bacon My experiments with making bacon infused vinegar led me to wonder about other bacon vinegar concoctions and the obvious first thing to try was pickled bacon. This differs from my bacon vinegar project in a few key ways: 1) the bacon to vinegar ratio is greatly increased, 2) the vinegar is salted, and 3) the bacon is briefly cooked in the vinegar. First up, I cut the strips of bacon in half so they would fit in the jar for pickling and fried them up. Expecting that soaking the bacon in vinegar would detrimentally effect the texture I cooked the bacon as crispy as I could without burning it. At this point in the interest of good experimental practices I ate a strip of the cooked bacon as a control The bacon frying The next step in the pickling process is heating the bacon and vinegar together with some pickling spices. This will help the bacon achieve a more "pickled" flavor rather than just tasting like it was dipped in vinegar. I assembled a quick pickling spice mixture of black peppercorns and a bay leaf (I was going to add garlic, but forgot at the last minute), and mixed that with the vinegar and bacon in a stainless saucepan. After my experience with boiling bacon many years ago and finding that a lot of the bacon-y flavor we all know and love is a result of proper sodium levels, I expected that the vinegar would need to be salted in order to prevent the bacon from losing it's precious sodium. After some quick research I found that cooked bacon is between 1 and 4% sodium by weight, so I decided to with a 2% solution which work our to about 1/4 tsp of table salt per ounce of vinegar. Boiling in vinegar I then brought the mixture to a boil, and then removed it from the burner and let it cool off. Not wanting to deal with the hassle of canning I put everything in a clean peanut butter jar and stored it in my fridge for a week. Packed in a jar for aging After waiting the requisite amount of time I was itching to try some of the pickled bacon. The taste was quite piquant, but it went well with the light smokiness of the bacon. The texture was nice and meaty, though the bacon had become quite floppy. The salt level was about right - the bacon hadn't lost any of it's native saltiness, nor had it become mega-salty. Overall, the one thing I'd probably do differently is try and pack more bacon in the jar so I'd not only have more in the end, but to try and increase the smoky flavor. Another variation to try next time will be to add a few tablespoons of vinegar from some pickled hot peppers to give an added zing. Pickled bacon

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