British Researchers Determine Perfect Bacon Sandwich
Published by Alex April 11th, 2007 in Food. Share This
It’s all too easy to slam the Brits for their native cuisine. They boil their meats and expertize in the bland and flavorless. Word is that they have the worst pizza known to the world, kind of a tip-off. They’ve become huge devotees of curries because of the large Indian and Pakistani populations who import foodstuffs with actual flavor. However, where the British do get it right, they don’t mess around, and it an be summed up in one word: bacon.
As reported in the New York Times, a 50 member strong team from Leeds University, as subsidized by the Danish Bacon and Food Council, recently spent upwards of 1,000 man hours to produce conclusive results on what makes the very best crowd-pleasing bacon sandwich. Money well spent.
The variations included different cooking processes, including grilling, baking, frying, and broiling, as well as four different types of bacon: smoked, unsmoked, streaky and thick cut (I assume “streaky” means lots of fat).
The Leeds U. team each consumed four to six bacon sandwiches per day for up to for days. And, presumably, got paid for it. And what did the experiment yeild, besides elevated cholesterol and an increased potential for heart attack?
It concluded that the best bacon butties were made with crisply grilled, not-too-fat bacon between thick slices of white bread.
Something tells me this final analysis could be refuted by the right American team, assuming that we could assemble one. But what self-respecting Yank would possibly volunteer to take part in such a deliciously unhealthy ambition, even if it is for posterity? Nudge-wink, say no more!
The Perfect Bacon Sandwich Decoded: Crisp and Crunchy [nytimes.com]
Having spent a lot of time in England, I have to say that the food thing is blown way out of proportion. Sure, there’s food there that sucks just like anywhere else, and a lot of their traditional dishes would scare the beejesus out of any American (eel pie?), but by and large my experience has been nothing but great when it comes to the cuisine, and I’m not talking about the ethnic stuff that most people associate with being the only thing that’s edible over there. They’re also way more accommodating when it comes to vegetarians (everything that’s suitable for a vegetarian diet is marked with an icon on the label), which i think its great considering their track record with beef and pork ;) At any rate, cut them some slack, they really are on the clue bus.
I think your view of British food is somewhat dated or simply the result of believing misinformation.
British cuisine has been on the up for several years with celebrity chefs http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/chef_biogs/s.shtml helping raise awareness of the financial, health and taste benefits of proper cooking and cuisine over the fast-food & ready-meal routines of old.
[)amien
British pizza isn’t that bad, Germany is pretty terrible pizza in comparison.
Also, that’s a Bacon Roll pictured, not a Sandwich.
PS, you do know what we do to pizza in Scotland, right?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep-fried_pizza
I tend not to defend myself here, letting whatever responses to my posts stand on their own. However, I have to note that I did say “native cuisine”, referring to the often-disparaged victuals of legend. But hey, I’ve never been there, I don’t know what I’m talking about. From what I’ve sampled of traditional Brit food to date, yeah, it’s pretty limited. But I’m sure that in the last 20-30 years they’ve been able to catch up with the finest in modern methods of preparation, recipe, seasoning and whatnot. The Naked Chef seems to know what he’s doing, anyway.
Regardless, this post was about BACON, which rules.
Streaky bacon = American bacon
‘Normal’ UK bacon = Canadian bacon
Know your bacon:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacon
You are doing this to torture Ryan, aren’t you. You bastards and your delicious food articles.
Do the toppings on deep-fried pizza’s always migrate/clump like the wiki picture? Otherwise that seems like a fantastic idea.