Halbach Baconfest in Pictures
Halbach Baconfest
Halbach Baconfest Part II – Taste Test
For the big bacon taste test, we had 5 competitors:
- Nueske’s – Applewood smoked, pepper coated
- Dreymiller and Kray – Hickory smoked
- Prairie Grove Farms – Applewood smoked, uncured
- Trader Joe’s – Apple smoked, uncured
- Moore Family Farm – Smoked and cured
I should add that the Moore Family Farm is not available in stores. We are part of a buying group that buys meat and eggs from a farm downstate. We’ve been out to visit the farm a few times, so I’ve probably actually met the pigs that went into that bacon!
So here is the list of our rankings, with the grand prize winners at the end. The winner may surprise you!
Shane:
| Brand | Type | Rating (1-10) | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nueske’s | Applewood smoked, pepper coated | 6 | Dark edges due to pepper, not as salty, less flavor than I expected, little bit of pepper after-burn |
| Dreymiller and Kray | Hickory smoked | 7 | wider strips, good texture, a little fattier, nice to have non-applewood, very salty |
| Prairie Grove Farms | Applewood smoked, uncured | 8 | salty, nice appearance, very good flavor |
| Trader Joe’s | Apple smoked, uncured | 8 | straightest, flattest bacon, sort of factory looking, salty, good flavor, lean |
| Moore Family Farm | Smoked and cured | 4 | fattier, sort of chewy, not very seasoned or salty, most authentically pork tasting, maybe good for soup |
Nathan:
| Brand | Type | Rating (1-10) | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nueske’s | Applewood smoked, pepper coated | 7 | The after taste is where all the flavor is, most smokey flavor |
| Dreymiller and Kray | Hickory smoked | 8 | Hickory: tasted a little more flavorful because of the fat |
| Prairie Grove Farms | Applewood smoked, uncured | 8 | Seasoned well can’t taste the smokiness or apple wood. |
| Trader Joe’s | Apple smoked, uncured | 7 | Lean, flat, good flavor – hint of apple wood but not too strong |
| Moore Family Farm | Smoked and cured | 5 | Thicker cut, more fat, so not as crisp, but not as flavorful |
Sara:
| Brand | Type | Rating (1-10) | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nueske’s | Applewood smoked, pepper coated | 7 | light and peppery, good to try, but wouldn’t choose on a regular basis |
| Dreymiller and Kray | Hickory smoked | 6 | a little saltier, would be a good topping for pizza |
| Prairie Grove Farms | Applewood smoked, uncured | 8 | very salty but flavor is great – also pretty flat (think BLTs) |
| Trader Joe’s | Apple smoked, uncured | 10 | good pig flavor, nice flat slice |
| Moore Family Farm | Smoked and cured | 4 | stringy and chewy, flaovr is “piggy” but texture unappealing |
Results:
| Brand | Average Rating |
|---|---|
| Trader Joe’s | 8 1/3 |
| Prairie Grove Farms | 8 |
| Dreymiller and Kray | 7 |
| Nueske’s | 6 2/3 |
| Moore Family Farm | 4 1/3 |
I was downright stunned that the Trader Joe’s one won. First off, it was the least exotic of the bunch. Second off, it was one of the cheapest (I can’t remember if it was cheaper than Moore Family Farm or not). Third off, it was probably the least impressive looking. After these results are in, I have discovered that this particular kind of bacon from Trader Joe’s has a big following. So really, this was a fantastic result, because this is the one kind of bacon that we might reasonably buy on a regular basis.
The other interesting thing was that the Prairie Grove brand came in second. This was the one that was the “healthiest”. Of course it’s still bacon, but it was hormone free, antibiotic free, etc. So even though you still have to feel bad about it, I guess you don’t have to feel AS bad about it.
We let Evie fill an evaluation out as well, but we didn’t count her ratings into the final results. However, you’ll notice something interesting! Evie picked the same two we did.
| Brand | Type | Rating (1-10) | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nueske’s | Applewood smoked, pepper coated | 1 | Might want to have it again, but not sure |
| Dreymiller and Kray | Hickory smoked | 1 | I don’t want to have it again |
| Prairie Grove Farms | Applewood smoked, uncured | 10 | That one was good too |
| Trader Joe’s | Apple smoked, uncured | 10 | I liked it |
| Moore Family Farm | Smoked and cured | 1 | Maybe I might have it again |
So, while we dismissed her comments, she was actually just as good at taste testing as we were! (To be fair, she would rate something a 1 and say I don’t want to have it again, while simultaneously trying to wheedle an extra piece away from one of us).
Halbach Baconfest
Around November or so, Nate “Bacon” Halbach gave me a call.
“You’re never going to believe this. There is a bacon festival in Chicago. On my birthday.”
It seemed like fate. Tickets were a bit on the pricey side (V.I.P. presales were over $100), but we knew we had to be there.
“No problem. We’ll buy you a ticket for Christmas / your birthday. Pack your bags my friend.”
Nothing could stop us from going. Nothing, except for the fact that the tickets sold out in less than 10 minutes.
In the end though, this turned out to be a good thing, because it spawned an idea so awesome, so epic, that just the thought alone stunned me in my tracks. I give you the first annual Halbach Baconfest.
It took Chicago Baconfest 10 minutes to sell out their tickets, but ours sold out in 1 nanosecond. Take that Chicago Baconfest!
I knew if we were going to do this thing, we had to do it right. Planning and preparation were required. I think Nathan expected that we’d just cook some bacon and call it a day. I think he was impressed several times throughout the day at the seriousness with which we approached Halbach Baconfest.
The night before we presented him with his Halbach Baconfest tee-shirt, so he could wear it on Saturday. It should be noted that, not knowing there would be tee-shirts, he brought his own bacon attire. But we needed the official items with the official logo of course.
So Saturday morning we started the day with piggy-shaped pancakes. These didn’t have bacon in them per say, but I think they were in the spirit of baconfest, and sort of set the tone.
We didn’t actually have any bacon with breakfast, which might seem strange, but breakfast rolled immediately into the bacon taste test. So there was bacon to be had. We tried to buy fancier or more exotic bacons than you would regularly buy for your daily use (read: no Oscar Meyer). There will be more details on this portion tomorrow, but this was really the only time we had straight up bacon all day.
After the taste test, we played “Pin the Tail on the Piggy”. Evie did phenomenally, although she had a height advantage in the sense that the tail location was a little low for an adult. I guess I can’t really use that as an excuse though, since I missed the easel entirely and put my tail on the wall. I wasn’t the worst though, Nathan put his partially up the stairs (I’m not really kidding!). Evie loved it and is dying to play again. I think she also enjoyed making all the piggy tails (she did the cutting and some of the curling).
Finally, it was time for the big feast (well, I’m fast-forwarding through hours of making food, including over an hour-and-a-half of straight bacon making. 54 ounces of bacon had to be cooked!
Our feast included Blue Cheese Coleslaw, Cheddar, Bacon, and Fresh Chive Biscuits, Bacon Wrapped Dates Stuffed with Blue Cheese and another set with Feta and pecans inside, Bacon-Balsamic Deviled Eggs and finally a Maple Apple Bacon Cake with Maple Glaze. Overall, everything was very good, but I have to say that most of the things didn’t seem to be that improved by bacon. For example, I couldn’t help but think that the cake would have been improved by the (::gasp::) removal of bacon. Still, for Baconfest, it was a good mix of things that really went together. I think we all agreed that the Blue Cheese Coleslaw was the standout, but the dates were pretty tasty, and certainly the most interesting. The Blue Cheese Coleslaw was the one thing that we had before, so we knew that one was good.
Finally, it was time to enter into the final phase of Baconfest: Kevin Bacon. That’s right, we had a copy of Footloose and we weren’t afraid to use it. Footloose was one of a handful of movies we had on VHS when I was little, and we watched it to death. I have to say, Footloose totally holds up! It was just as good as I remember it being. Kevin Bacon is an American treasure.
Watching it as an adult though gave me a totally different perspective on the movie. Those kids were totally out of control! I don’t know whether dancing would necessarily make them act worse, but it probably wouldn’t have helped. So I guess now I’m kind of on the side of John Lithgow. His daughter man…she should have been locked up.
The plan was to have some bacon-salted popcorn while we watched the movie, but nobody had the stomach for it after the earlier bacon feast. However, we weren’t too full to do some Footloose dancing…
Everybody cut Footloose!
5 ways I “won” today
- I maximized my leftover removal potential by combining the leftover chili with the leftover taco meat into one giant bowl of awesome.
- I sold something I didn’t need anymore instead of throwing it in the trash. I make money and I don’t generate trash — double win!
- I laid the foundation for a ridiculously epic event next month, which shall be known as “Halbach Baconfest”.
- I mastered the copy machine at work. I took 15 single sided, color pages and turned them into 10 copies of double-sided, color pages, which were already stapled for me.
- I live in a world where copy machines can staple pages. Hello, welcome to the future! Why waste 10 seconds doing a job myself, when I can pay thousands of dollars for an overly elaborate machine to do it! If that’s not a win, I don’t know what is.
Shane Halbach 