We've been getting the applewood smoked bacon at Costco for a couple months now, and I'm addicted to the stuff. Would gladly trade a child or my left arm to taste it's yummy bacony goodness. The problem is, we can only get it from the Costco by his folks house, four hours away.
Ben's been at his folks for the past couple days and I didn't want to cook the good bacon while he was gone, even though he's no doubt enjoying some while he's up there (that's just the kind of girlfriend I am), so I picked up a small package of applewood bacon from the local grocery store. They only had one option, but it's applewood smoked and didn't look too bad, so I gave it a shot. For those of you who wish to conduct your own experiment, the grocery store bacon was from a company called Prairie Group. The stuff from Costco was from Farmer's Hickory. Neither of which I've ever heard of.
It clearly isn't just in the smoking process since two similar pieces of meat smoked in the same fashion should taste the same. So there must be something else to it.
This .... other .... bacon was inferior. The cut wasn't consistent throughout the package, when it was cooked, there were too many "stings," there were too many sections that were too fatty and didn't cook to a pleasant crisp, and the flavor, while not awful (it's bacon, after all), wasn't as deeply and cleanly delicious as the stuff we got at Costco.
But it was still bacon and the pup and I shared the whole package. Next time I'll just eat the good stuff and not worry about sharing. Being a good girlfriend takes second place to eating second rate bacon.
