“Gimme a pig foot and a bottle of beer,” the sainted Bessie Smith sang, and you should note both the beverage and that she used a conjunction, not a preposition. She did not say she’d like a pig foot in a bottle of whiskey, which is what I saw before me on a bar-top recently. Wasn’t a bottle, actually, it was a large jar, because whole pigs’ feet (like camels through needles’ eyes) cannot pass through the neck of a bottle.
The pig foot was in there to flavor—to infuse—the whiskey, and I won’t tell you who was doing this because he’s an otherwise sensible mixologist. Working on a BLT cocktail, he was. This is the result of the constant pressure for innovation in the cocktail game and of the new law that requires every bar in the country to have a line-up of bottles filled with stuff—chili peppers, boysenberries, ginseng, cucumber, grapefruit, basil, and anything else that’s handy—oozing in vodka. The newest flavor sensation is bacon, and this guy had just taken it a step further to a whole pig foot.
Now, I genuflect to no man in my devotion to pork products. The single best meal I ever had, better than all those vertical creations in restaurants with names like Nobu, NoMi, Naha, and Tru, was a bacon butty, eaten at dawn, from a van parked on the edge of the Spey River. I was on my unbreakfasted way to the Tamdhu distillery to see what a saladin box looked like, and the bacon smell got me. The greasy little treat was so good I risked being late to have a second one, and I’d have head-butted my grandmother if she’d gotten in my way. I’ve paid 18 Euro for a plate of 5-year-old jamon Iberico in Madrid, and I’ve successfully carried guanciale (that’s pig cheeks, pilgrim) wrapped in dirty shirts past those dope-and-meat-sniffing beagles at O’Hare Airport. I firmly believe that a bacon-doughnut sandwich is among the finest brunch offerings on the planet (don’t trust me—try it). In short, I’ll eat any part of a pig you can think of, but I do not want to see it in my glass at the end of a long day.
The pig foot was in there to flavor—to infuse—the whiskey, and I won’t tell you who was doing this because he’s an otherwise sensible mixologist. Working on a BLT cocktail, he was. This is the result of the constant pressure for innovation in the cocktail game and of the new law that requires every bar in the country to have a line-up of bottles filled with stuff—chili peppers, boysenberries, ginseng, cucumber, grapefruit, basil, and anything else that’s handy—oozing in vodka. The newest flavor sensation is bacon, and this guy had just taken it a step further to a whole pig foot.
Now, I genuflect to no man in my devotion to pork products. The single best meal I ever had, better than all those vertical creations in restaurants with names like Nobu, NoMi, Naha, and Tru, was a bacon butty, eaten at dawn, from a van parked on the edge of the Spey River. I was on my unbreakfasted way to the Tamdhu distillery to see what a saladin box looked like, and the bacon smell got me. The greasy little treat was so good I risked being late to have a second one, and I’d have head-butted my grandmother if she’d gotten in my way. I’ve paid 18 Euro for a plate of 5-year-old jamon Iberico in Madrid, and I’ve successfully carried guanciale (that’s pig cheeks, pilgrim) wrapped in dirty shirts past those dope-and-meat-sniffing beagles at O’Hare Airport. I firmly believe that a bacon-doughnut sandwich is among the finest brunch offerings on the planet (don’t trust me—try it). In short, I’ll eat any part of a pig you can think of, but I do not want to see it in my glass at the end of a long day.
It’s not going to be easy to avoid, however. Bacon is the new hibiscus, which was the new cucumber, which followed lychee, hard on the heels of pomegranate, which replaced tamarind. (You can trace this back to Hollywood in the 1940s, by the way, when apricot became the new pineapple.) The Today Show this morning featured multiple versions of bacon-flavored salt. Here in Chicago, one of our upscalest restaurants is serving bacon ice cream and a local candy artisan is offering a seven-dollar chocolate bar with maple-syrup-carmelized bacon. One can sit upon a stool here and order a glass of bacon-green apple vodka (“baconcillo”) combined with maple syrup and lime juice.
They’re serving up bacon-tinis in Las Vegas, but then they would, wouldn’t they? In Virginia, a misguided young man (a “molecular mixologist,” apparently influenced by all those chefs cooking with liquid nitrogen instead of fire) is making a drink that marries cantaloupe-infused rum with hand-powdered bacon and tapioca. And he’s proud of it. A little web-surfing will introduce you to the Hawaiian Pizza, a drink that unwisely combines bacon-flavored vodka with pineapple juice. I have seen a bacon gin fizz and a brunch drink called the Bed and Breakfast that features a stemmed glass of vodka and maple syrup topped with a toast round, a fried quail egg, and a slice of bacon. Seems to me it would be much faster just to order two over easy with bacon and a short stack, double vodka on the side. Probably cheaper, too.
In perhaps the most queasy presentation in the history of the American saloon, there are bartenders out there who are coating the rims of glassware with bacon grease. Try this recipe: "Lightly mist a martini glass with vermouth, and rim the edge with bacon grease. In a cocktail shaker, mix 3oz vodka, one dash Tabasco, and one dash olive juice. Shake well and strain into cocktail glass. Skim excess bacon grease from surface of cocktail. Garnish with one slice of bacon." Gerry Thomas wept.
A slightly, but only slightly, wiser bartender can be found on YouTube instructing us to put an ounce of smoky bacon fat in a bottle of Four Roses for four hours, then put it in the freezer for a couple of hours to separate out the fat before straining. Puts chill-filtering in a whole new light.
And yes, of course I’ve made it my business to taste all of these things. I live for research, and it’s my duty as an investigative spirit journalist to suffer so you don’t have to. The bacon chocolate isn’t bad, actually, except that there’s no real bacon flavor there, just salt—which is always good with chocolate. The bacon ice cream was a crime against nature, like culinary incest. As was the eight dollars it cost, adumbrated of course by the fact that it was a public-relations representative’s eight dollars, not my own.
The Tabasco bacon-tini with its grease-rimmed glass was just a hot, bad drink followed by an application of bacon ChapStick. I recommend it for people who hate the taste of whiskey and have chapped lips. The bacon-green apple vodka, maple syrup, lime juice thing was better than it sounds, but mostly because the bacon got lost under all the other flavors; the bacon gin fizz, however, led me to sincerely wish that it’s creator had been drowned at birth. I’ll confess to not having tried the cantaloupe-infused rum with powdered bacon and tapioca. You’re on your own--I have to draw the line somewhere. I can report, however, one successful use of bacon in a drink, and right here in Chicago. A local eatery is adding a thick, crisp slice of bacon to their bloody Marys as a garnish. For openers, it’s a breakfast item, where bacon belongs, but it’s also a major improvement over the celery stick. Makes a nice stir, and nibbling it between sips of spicy, spiked tomato juice was a lovely experience. I’d order it with a doughnut back.
Most of the rest of the bacon-infused stuff I tried—whiskey, vodka, aquavit, God help us—just tasted slightly smoky, with no pork presence at all. The same thing could be achieved with a couple of drops of liquid smoke, but anyone with an IQ larger than his shoe size would just stick with an Islay whisky if smoke was the goal.
But don’t think you’re out of the woods. I attended a cutting-edge mixology demo last week, featuring the newest creations from the hands of the hippest gin-slingers in town. Whole lot of shaking going on, and a lot of new flavor sensations and new infusions. I’m afraid the new bacon is garlic.
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