Saturday, June 1, 2013

Bacon Fail/Prosciutto Win

It's been a while, hasn't it?

It's not that I haven't been eating, so much as I have been completely forgetting to take pictures altogether. And when I do take pictures, I forget to upload them because my htc Whatever S phone won't show the pictures I've taken if the card is too full. Out of sight, out of mind, as they say.

But I did take pictures of my porc cookery!

When I was at the butcher's getting my all-naturally-raised, hormone-free, free-range. antibiotic-free, locally-sourced meat, I saw that the butcher's had thick-cut "Danish style" bacon. I had no idea what that was, but it looked good. The kid behind the counter -- the butcher's nephew, I believe -- told me it was way better than regular bacon because it was thick cut. So I bought 8 slices.

The next morning, I made 4 slices of bacon. I'm going to admit that I'd never fried bacon before that moment. I had either let Spousal Unit do it, or I'd let my mom do it. So I had to look up how to fry bacon.

The Internets told me that the best thing to do was to make one layer of bacon covering the entire pan, and let the pan warm up with the bacon in it. Then, once the bacon started to sizzle, you let it cook for 6 minutes per side.

I did that. The first problem I ran into was that my bacon was longer than my pan. I had bacon edges running up the sides of the pan. The other problem I ran into was that the pan was not warming up uniformly. This may have been because the slice of bacon on one side was just slightly bigger than the slice on the other side.

The next problem I ran into was that once the bacon started sizzling, it started to attack me! It was spitting grease at me like nobody's business! I put the pan lid up and used it as a shield. I got the baking soda out of the fridge and prepared myself to put out a grease fire.

The source of my humiliation

Fortunately, while I did burn the bacon, I did not start a fire.

The bacon tasted pretty good, even though it was slightly burnt. But I didn't try frying the last 4 slices. Instead we cut them up and used them in black bean soup (not pictured). It made tasty black bean soup.

The next day I decided to try something else to satisfy my still-unrequited desire for bacon: I decided to bake some prosciutto.

My mom had made prosciutto chips as a garnish for salads a few times and they had been really tasty (the only good part of the salads, for the most part). I knew they were baked, not fried, so I didn't have to worry about the prosciutto attacking me with grease. It sounded fool-proof.

And it was!

For the first time ever something I tried from an online recipe worked out perfect! I mean, beside the Martha Stewart one-bowl muffins. Those were good.

But seriously, the prosciutto chips were easy to make and were absolutely fantastic! I just layered the prosciutto on parchment paper and baked them for 10min (I think I baked them at 375F or 400F). Then I took them out, put them on a rack to cool, and ate them.

My redemption.
And so my weekend was a time of sadness and rejoicing.

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