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I asked for a bacon roll. I wasn't given an option as to whether I wanted proper bacon or American ruination.
Never supermarket bacon, the packaging is often thicker, although a lot less watery but shares the same levels of shrinkage when heated.
Butcher bacon around here you are hard pushed to get 3 slices in the big pan, only 2 if you want any chance of getting an egg in the pan at the end.
I like to lightly toast the bottom slice to help soak up the fat and keep a stable sandwich.
Another slice in the pan for some fried bread and to clean the pan.
Bit of grated cheese on top.
Had to buy some Porcus dry cured for tomorrow morning.
This is the recipe I've used for stout and treacle. I think someone on here recommend it ages ago.
You don't need the Prague powder really. Just make sure the pork is decent quality. I go for middle, so you get a nice chunk of loin and belly too.
I also ask the butcher who I get the pork off if he can slice it for me once done, in exchange for some rashers. I don't own a slicer and couldn't get my cuts right even with my butchery knives.
grilling is fine if you can’t cook or are hungover and don’t want to risk it, but if you know what you’re doing frying is obviously best!Grilling Vs Frying? My mum always grilled bacon and it’s good at guaranteeing a crispy rind, but frying gets more colour and flavour into the meat I reckon. Just got to press the fat into the pan to crispen up.
A chef once told me that you need to “melt” the fat before crisping it up which basically means putting it on a medium heat until the fat has melted and then turn it up a notch to get it crispy. Takes a bit longer and is best with dry cured from the butcher but the results speak for themselves.
I also ask the butcher who I get the pork off if he can slice it for me once done, in exchange for some rashers. I don’t own a slicer
The local butcher's assistant was fired for putting his "sausage" in the meat slicer. What happened to the meat slicer?
She was fired too.
(Peter Kay, I think)
She was sacked too.
Bacon and mushroom cob is my favourite 'guilty treat'.
The mushrooms must be fried hot and quick with a generous amount of coarse ground black pepper. Soft cob too - crusty cobs have their place, but this isn't it.
After a 100 mile wiggle ride i was hungry amd the smell of f fat coming off the griddle proved too alluring
Can i have a bacon burger in a grilled bap please, i said.
The reply... Whats a grilled bap?
Now try to mansplain to the hapless lass that its a bap tjats been grilled for a few seconds, witjout sounding condescending
Maybe a career in catering wasnt for her
Perhaps it was bap she didn't understand (given regional differences in terminology) rather than grilled.
Toasted?
bacon in the air fryer is the way forward these days. buying better bacon is recommended too.
Bacon and mushroom cob is my favourite ‘guilty treat’.
Jeeso, one problem with not having a bacon sandwich for so long - I'd forgotten bacon and mushroom is THE way to go. Even with a runny egg in there too.
The reply… Whats a grilled bap?
You'e entering a regional minefield there
In Accrington they call them teacakes. WTF is that all about? 😳
south west scotland call a roll a rowie ..... odd folk.
a rowie is not a roll....
a rowie is masses of salt and butter and a wee touch of flour 😀
That map is all bollox
A Vienna?
A morning roll is just a roll, no?
I come from a family of bacon-worshippers going back many generations.
A few people here are right. Most are wrong.
First and foremost:
Never supermarket bacon
Cannot overstate. To explain to cyclists would best compare a sub-Halfords BSO that nonetheless says ‘bike’ on the label - with a hand-built, custom-butted-tubed good quality bicycle that will do the job well.
But it doesn’t automatically follow that all high street butchers stock decent traditional bacon. Many just sell similar stuff to supermarkets.
I don’t eat it hardly ever these days so don’t search, but the last time I chanced upon some decent stuff was 2018. It was that good that I remember the year. It took me back to childhood (the quality, taste and texture and scent of the bacon). It was from a small village butcher in South Shrops. Bought three rashers for about £2. The side was kept on a cold stone and sliced with a slicing machine to my preference and wrapped in paper. Nice thick streaky rashers. (The irony is that bacon like this was as common as Raleigh Choppers when I was a kid (industrial town in West Midlands) and yet now ‘traditional’ quality is viewed suspiciously by most today as if it’s some kind of affectation.
Cooking:
I cooked them on gas in a non-stick pan with no oil.
To do this bring up the heat slowly. They will begin to create their own pool of hot fat if you do it correctly. There is little-to-no shrinkage of good quality bacon, unless you like it very well done then it will shrink towards the end of cooking.
After 5-10 mins of gentle cooking the flat, thick rashers should be sizzling in a good quantity of their own rendered fat. This is all that I want on my bread, ie the ‘bacon dip’
Before loading the (white, farmhouse) bread with the rashers, move the rashers aside in the pan and place bread slices one by one in the pan and cook (what are to be the two ‘inside sides’ of the sandwich) for about 10 secs in the hot fat.
Ideally there will be a very gentle crisping around the edge of the bread crusts. You’re not frying the bread until brown, it’s just a very hot dip so the bread remains soft inside yet takes on the tasty hot bacon-fat as a ‘spread’. Now turn off the heat then load the rashers in-between the bread.
Condiments should be minimal, if at all. I sometimes would put a slug of Daddies or OK, or HP sauce (insert favourite brown sauce) on the plate and dip the butty with alternative bites.
But the key to all of this is simply the rendered fat and the quality of the meat.
- No watery pink plastic packed rubbish (ruins everything)
- No spread (ruins the taste)
- No grilling (dries the meat)
- No rush (ruins everything)
I’d take that once in a blue moon over any frequency of plastic-encased pink watery rubbish.
south west scotland call a roll a rowie ….. odd folk.
I can absolutely assure you we ****ing don't. We have many idiosyncrasies but that's not one of them. Also a roll is a roll (and a toll is a toll) but I bet you know fine and well a buttery isn't a roll. Despite it being on the wrong coast.
@binners that map is utter shite, nobody in Scotland calls a roll a cob (there aren't enough people in sutherland to even have a regional variation) and butteries are an Aberdonian thing. Baps are shitty overly doughy things to put burgers in, not your breakfast.
Bagel.
Kind of ironic but irrefutable.
*Edit
After 5-10 mins of gentle cooking the flat, thick rashers should be sizzling in a good quantity of their own rendered fat. Continue cooking until satisfied with the result
Out on a ride in Yorkshire a few years ago, we stopped at one of those little heritage railway stations, there was a cabin there doing basic food. Chalkboard outside said bacon sandwiches, we were both well up for that.
They put a couple of rashers of bacon into the microwave on a styrofoam tray. We'd already moved to one side by then to allow the next people to order so it was too late to say "actually, NO...!"
It was edible. Just. I think it's the first time I've ever had microwaved bacon, it will definitely be the last. I like nice crispy bacon. 🙂
Baps are shitty overly doughy things made for chip butties, to put
burgers innothing in unless chips and butter and especially not your breakfast.
ftfy
(there aren’t enough people in sutherland to even have a regional variation)
It'll be all the English moving up to get away from it all and open BnBs SK
Yep that map is just wrong. I live in south east Leeds and its breadcake all the way round here, or scuffler sometimes (but thats a slightly different type of breadcake, and usually Wakefield area). Halifax it's teacake, a teacake like everyone else knows it is a 'current teacake'. But they also have chats nights at chip shops, so what do they know.....
I was born in Leicester and I've never heard a bap type thing being called a cob outside of the east midlands, but a round loaf gets called a cob in a fair few other places.
Any way, crispy bacon, mushroom and fried egg with brown sauce on an oven bottom cake is the way to go!
Never supermarket bacon
Not even the likes of Taste the Difference Dry Cured ?
In Accrington they call them teacakes
Teacakes also in Barnsley. If you want currants in them ask for a currant teacake.
That maps sooo wrong.
It's more wrong than right.
Smoked bacon from the butchers.
In the Aga for 12/14 minutes fresh morning roll or proper bread.
Done.
Options to expand include square sausage and or an Egg.
So am I literally the only person on STW that doesn't like crunchy bacon?
So am I literally the only person on STW that doesn’t like crunchy bacon?
Nope, I prefer non crunchy.
binners
Full Member
The reply… Whats a grilled bap?You’e entering a regional minefield there
you call it a bap up here in glesga you'll get looked at funny, it's a roll.
Map is miles oot I'd guess.
So am I literally the only person on STW that doesn’t like crunchy bacon?
I'll answer with pictures:
Bacon: 
Ruined: 
In other words, no. Unless you mean the rind in which case I can take a bit of crunch but, again, not solid.
We call it a breadcake (Rotherham).
That map is all bollox
<zooms in>
Don’t bollocks normally come in pairs?
Crispy bacon comes in made by smiths. Yes, crisp the rind but the meat needs to be just past raw. Streaky is what you put around other more tasty meat products.
Find a good butcher, a really good one and buy dry, you’ll never buy supermarket again.
Further to the original post, I had a bacon sandwich (BLT) from the cafe in Walkerburn today and it was excellent. Thick bacon, cooked not crispy but juicy and colourful. It was perfect. Relevant for the biking community where it is, I recommend.
What is it with this trendy, new fangled, designer coffee style codswallop with modern food? Bacon is fried. No body grilled it 100 years ago. It isn't crisp, thats the same as having crispy chips. Another poncy modern invention.
Bacon is only worth having if it doesn't come in plastic although I will, reluctantly, conseed that it is hard to find it sitting in a block from which it is cut to taste. If it cannot be bought by the individual piece don't buy it.
Of course butter. What are you? Some health freak. Bet you have tofu and mung beans with your bacon. Butter adds to the grease content.
Bacon "grease"? That's typical of what's wrong with American English.
On a slightly related note, I was once eulogising to younger colleagues on the delights of pork dripping. Once they understood what it was they couldn't believe anyone would choose to spread it on bread. Youth of today eh?
Bacon “grease”? That’s typical of what’s wrong with American English.
Is it the word?
I was once eulogising to younger colleagues on the delights of pork dripping
Hearing that brings back fond memories of my dear old dad, God bless his soul. Taken from us so young from heart failure. He had his faults, as we all do, but Jesus Christ he knew how to do a fry-up when mum wasn't home to do the cooking.
Is it the word?
Yes. Grease goes on bearings. It's bacon "fat".
Yes. Grease goes on bearings. It’s bacon “fat”.
What if you rub it on the inside of your thighs to stop them chafing when you're riding your bike?
Yes. Grease goes on bearings. It’s bacon “fat”.
For the motion?