Bacon

Yes, bacon. I found the less fatty, thicker, and very salty bacon that we were privileged enough to be able to eat in the UK so extraordinary, that I believe it deserves its own post. We first encountered this amazing meat at the Belfast International Youth Hostel, on our first real morning of the trip. We ordered the MEGA Belfast Breakfast to share (and you know it has to be big if Ryan was willing to share): 2 griddled soda bread, 2 griddled potato bread, 2 slices "brown" toast, 3 sausages, 3 eggs, bacon, fried tomato, and baked beans (all for 5.50 GBP, less than $10).

This is otherwise known as the Ulster Fry, and is a variation on the traditional British Breakfast that we also enjoyed in Scotland (the Irish one having soda and potato bread, while the Scottish one had mushrooms tossed into the mix). I was hooked. I have always loved tomatoes, especially of the cooked variety, and beans, and in this dish I encountered a new found love: back bacon. As it turns out, in the UK the bacon comes from pork loin (hmmmm, not the back as the name would imply), while here in the US we eat the less delicious, in my opinion, meat from the belly of the pig (yes, in this case belly does mean belly).

The bacon we encountered was so much more pork like in nature, and completely different from the American variety, that the American bacon seems to be but a distant cousin of the other more decadent pig products. First off, there is the thickness. I usually enjoy my American bacon crispy, or else it seems like I am eating a thin slice of fat instead of meat (more on that later), but crispy bacon in no way compares to satisfyingly biting into a thick slice of cured meat. The meat was also significantly less fatty than American bacon, which usually has large streaks of white fat, often more than actual meat. My dislike of the consistency of fat has left me often running off to turkey bacon as an alternative, but this was not a problem with the back bacon, which had only a thin line of fat, just enough to add flavor, running along the side of each slice. Lastly, there is the flavor. In addition to the higher pork content, and hence more delicious meaty flavor, whatever is used to cure the meat resulted in a more salty, yet still smoky, cut of meat.

If I can only bring one dish that I ate while we travelled in Ireland and Scotland into my recipe repertoire, then I would have that be the Ulster Fry. Now for finding some back bacon in Houston...