We were recently contacted by Oscar Mayer's PR people and asked if we would like to try some free bacon. We thought to ourselves, a large corporation offering up a free sample, isn't that selling out, what about our "independent integrity"? We wrestled with this for all of about 8.3 seconds (only reason it took that long was we were speechless for 5) and realized "independent integrity"? We don't even know what that is, pretty sure its made up. We would love to try some free bacon please!
So we received a "bacon care package" from the folks at Oscar Mayer including product samples of the new Super Thick Cut Applewood Smoked Bacon, some coupons so we can share some with the readers, a skillet, and a hot pad to cook up the bacon. We also got some recipes we will be trying and sharing and a grocery gift card for supplies.
It was like "Bacon Christmas", or Festivus if that's your thing. Pretty sure neither of us had been this excited since unwrapping an Atari 2600 way back in the day. Bacon Jason will be posting his thoughts soon and my review follows here in this post. If you get all the way through that at the end I will tell you how you can win a coupon for a free package of the new Oscar Mayer Super Thick Cut Applewood Smoked Bacon to try for yourself.
The first thing I noticed when I picked up the bacon was it is THICK, they are not kidding with the word Super here. We love our STP Ratio© here at LoB. The label on this new bacon comes says it has 9 strips in a package that is a whopping 9: 1 STP Ratio©!!!!!! I counted and my package had ten, so it is an approximation but even at 10:1 this stuff is thick!
I decided to be fair I should do a side by side comparison, I chose Oscar Mayer's 12oz package of Center Cut Bacon. Now I am not sure but I think figuring an STP Ratio© with a 12oz package of bacon requires some algebraic formula that only physicists or possibly a super computer could figure out. I took a couple of pictures with a quarter on top so you can get a good idea of the difference between these two bacons.
OK so I am no photographer, and heck it was my iPhone, but you get the idea.
Time to open these up and give em a sniff. The new bacon reeked (in the good way) of smokiness, the center cut, not so much, well, after the applewood smoked, you could say not at all. I asked my daughter to give them an impartial sniff, she didn't like either, but remember she is a vegetarian (whoo hoo I get all the bacon!).
So I have the bacon out and am getting it onto the tray, and I have to be honest it is reminiscent of some of the gourmet bacon's we have tried, the pieces have a "slice of pork belly" shape to them. This is looking up for a widely available super market bacon. The Center cut are all very uniform and have the squared off shape.
This is a full pound, 10 slices. It will be interesting to see what sort of shrinkage we get. As you might know, good gourmet bacon does not shrink much when cooked.
This is the center cut that is 20 slices in 12oz. Twice the slices in 3/4ths of the weight....carry the 9....solve for x.... hell I am no physicist.
Well I would love to show you pictures after it was cooked, but the house was full of the smell of bacon and my child wasn't going to eat any, I got distracted. The center cut had some shrinkage as expected, it was thin, it was "OK" bacon, I am a thick man myself.
The Super Thick Cut Applewood Smoked Bacon takes a while to cook, if you are in a hurry this is not the bacon you want. But trust me its worth the wait, it was thick, it was meaty, very little shrinkage. The folks at Oscar Mayer did thier homework and have put out the best bacon I have ever had from them. The package says "Bacon Lovers", and if that is you, I think you will enjoy this bacon, thats not to say all you "Bacon Likers", "Flirts with Bacon but doesn't go all the way" or "Bacon Friends With Benefits" folks are left out, this is the good stuff. If you only do bacon once a week for Sunday breakfast (all I can say is huh?!?), then this is the stuff you want. Sure you can get the prescription bacon mail order from the specialty places online, and it is great stuff. But this is over the counter, at your local supermarket bacon. If you are shopping the Von's, Ralph's uber chain type store, you know your options can be limited. I can tell you things just got simple, get this and you can't go wrong.
Now how do we get this bacon as an option at Carl's Jr? That would rock my world!
We had a chance to talk with John Li, an executive chef at Kraft that has been coming up with recipes for this new bacon (best job ever b.t.w.) and we will have more on that once we can get our hands on some more of this bacon at our local market (more on that later today). There are some great things you can do with a quality meat and this bacon qualifies.
I don't know if this our longest post ever, but its got to be close, I am sure we lost a few of the friends after the first paragraph, ooh pictures...soo many words.. huh what? drool McRib! Zzzzz. And if that's the case they will miss this part. Oscar Mayer gave us some coupons for FREE Super Thick Cut Bacon that we get to share with you. That's right FREE BACON! Bacon Jason and I have a couple of ideas on how to give out the coupons, maybe something on the facebox page, maybe a twatter contest, but I think we can do something simple right now. Email us at lordsofbacon (at) gmail (dot) com with the subject FREE BACON by lets say 7:06 pm PST this coming Monday 12/21/09. Once is enough, and I will select someone at random from those emails and they win. We do not want to collect your addresses for nefarious purposes, and I am going to delete the mails after the contest, so don't worry about getting spam from us, but someone will get BACON.. get it? spam.. pork product.. bacon.. meat of the gods?? I thought it was funny. OK Go!
