I haven’t blogged about bacon for the past two months, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been eating it!

Bacon #4 is Burger’s Jowl Bacon from Missouri. Bacon can be made from various cuts of the pig: belly, middle of the back, shoulder and cheek. Jowl bacon comes from the cheek and is very fatty – a big change from Bacon #3, which was relatively lean (and heavily, overly flavored with cinnamon.)

Except from accompanying literature:

Mrs. Burger, a native of Germany, brought to the new country the age-old art of meat curing so necessary to country life before electricity was introduced to rural America. As a youngster, Mr. Burger learned the basic recipe and principles involved in preserving meats to prevent spoiling from his mother …

Burger’s Jowl Bacon is rubbed with a dry recipe of salt, cane sugar and spice. Slow curing allows the mixture to absorb into the slab … The result is a mellow flavor, with a nice balance of spice, smoke and sweetness that’s slightly milder than other bacon.

This bacon has a LOT of fat. Look at it – it’s like 70% grease. Each slice is also very short. They fried up very nicely and turned an even brown, and even shorter when done.

Talk about melt-in-the-mouth. Bite on a slice. Loud crunch. The bacon immediately dissolves in our mouths.

Meat candy.

I used to think I was pretty picky about bacon – oh, it’s got to be this salty enough, this sugary enough … With Burger’s Jowl Bacon, I started thinking I was a pretty simple person after all. Just give me fat that I can crunch on.

Mom Jane has been sending us a ton of wonderful bacon recipes. But since we were a bit lazy that evening, we decided to go with tried-and-true Quiche Lorraine. We baked a store-bought Pillsbury crust and loaded it up with bacon, shredded cheese, eggs, green onions and nutmeg for an easy dinner.

The quiche was perfect. You know what makes a great quiche? Crispy bacon.

For our second bacon dish, we decided to try one of the new recipes - an “all-in-one” French toast breakfast. The recipe called for me to fry up the bacon on the stovetop ’til it’s just slightly cooked, then put it on top of the French toast to be baked. I think the idea was to allow the bacon fat to melt and soak into the French toast, but I was a little grossed out by the idea of French toast swimming an enormous amount of grease, and so I kinda overcooked on the bacon on the stovetop before putting it in the oven.

I actually really liked the outcome. It’s not anything different from regular French toast with bacon on the side, but it’s good enough for me. My husband wasn’t terribly impressed. He liked it, but just as a regular thing, not something special.

Previous bacon posts:
• Bacon #2, Swiss Meat & Sausage Co. Honey Bacon, and Bacon #3, Father’s Hickory Smoked Cinnamon-Sugar Bacon.
• Bacon #1, Petit Jean Ham Ozark Hickory Smoked Bacon Ham I Am.
• Bacon of the month club welcome kit.

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