Phagomania: You must be bacon this up

This time last year, in this very column, we showed you how to make your own bacon. Cuba Libre bacon, no less – check through your carefully-arranged back issues of Phagomania if you can’t remember.

Nowadays it seems that everything that was once embellished with bacon has now been replaced with the now-ubiquitous pulled pork. Pulled pork on your burger? Pulled pork in your soup? Pulled pork in your Tesco sandwich? Bacon was the universal accompaniment for every meat eater and we feel it's time to… return to the bacon. We're bacon’ changes, bacon’ it back to the old school, etc etc.

We’ve taken a whirlwind tour of porky products and tackled them ourselves to see if bacon is back. First on the agenda is popcorn. It does seem increasingly difficult to get regular flavours of popcorn these days. Everyone is messing around with seemingly odd combinations of both sweet and savoury ingredients and packaging it in an austere manner to make it look like it is a traditional and sensible flavour for popcorn. The latest off the production line: smoky bacon popcorn.

This comes from a leading microwave popcorn brand and was sampled by an assorted team of unsuspecting taste testers. Initial optimism was aroused by the pleasant aroma from the microwave as the popping commenced. Very much like a packet of Frazzles bacon crisps – and everyone likes those. A couple of minutes later and we tucked into a big warm bowl of disappointment. Dry, almost cardboard-like popcorn with a tiny hint of faux-bacon flavour (which didn’t even seem deliberate). Pass the sweet or salted.

The next taste test brought on equal measures of well-deserved astonishment, excitement and fear. We bring you Chocolate Covered Maple Smoked Bacon Soda. Imported from the USA, of course. “Breakfast in a bottle”, the label promised. “I’ve actually had all of those things together,” proclaimed a Canadian member of our tasting team. “On top of a cupcake. This does sound like home in a bottle.” Cracking it open, we admittedly felt like a group of Neolithic men lacking the assurance of knowledge on what was safe to eat.

First the sniff test. “Smells like Hershey’s,” our native offers. “Yep, definitely a kind of artificial chocolatey smell.” Nothing left other than to swig the bacon, and there’s a sentence even this column never thought it would see. The facial expressions here tell the most accurate story. A multi-staged affair where ambiguity evolves into grief. “Tastes like ass. Don’t drink it”, was the first response. “It’s soapy. Like soapy water that has been cleaning up chocolate and bacon,” was the second. Someone broke rank with an “it’s not that bad,” while we even had an “I could drink that.” One thing is for sure, it certainly follows the syntax of the description. Starts off chocolatey, moves into a weird maple and smoke territory finishing with an aftertaste that is almost bacon.

One product we most certainly won’t be trying, yet still caught our interest, is whiskey-flavoured bacon. Templeton Rye distillery, in Iowa, USA (naturally), have launched an experimental project whereby they are trying to rear pigs that taste like their whiskey. They seem pretty confident that adding spent rye mash grain to the pig’s food will deliver the goods. The pigs are due for “processing” this month and we wait with bated breath to see if bourbon bacon could be a reality. Then we’ll know how to really make Cuba Libre bacon; just find a farmer who will accept some molasses and swap his grass for lime trees.

As we were losing faith in the prospect of bacon products, we did what one should always do in this situation, and went back online. Our faiths were soon restored with the sight of a giant and literal mug of bacon, filled with melted cheese. And our old friend Nick at dudefoods.com (whom we interviewed in November) has upped his bacon taco game by producing a Double Decker Mac & Cheese Stuffed Bacon Weave Taco to his repertoire.

If you haven’t seen your favourite bacon flavoured food item mentioned here, please give us a shout. Let’s create some sort of Wikibacon. Why not, eh? Couldn’t be madder than what the pros are up to.