In this installment
Bacon bits
Maker: Chris Eley and company in Indianapolis, Indiana
Cure: Wet cured in shagbark hickory syrup
Smoke: Smoked over whole hickory logs
Taste: Rich, salty, with a slightly sticky texture.
About Shagbark Bacon
Maple syrup come from the sap of maple trees. The trees are tapped in the spring when the weather is just right, with the days warming to above freezing but the nights remaining cold. The sap is collected in tubes from the trees and then cooked down, traditionally over wood fires, to boil the liquid to a thick, viscous syrup. The color and flavor of the syrup changes over the course of the season from golden and delicate to dark and robust as the sap’s sugar and water content shift.
Shagbark syrup, on the other hand, is made from the long, flat strips of bark from the Shagbark Hickory tree. Its descriptive name comes from the light grey shaggy, peeling bark that comes off in thick sheets on the older trees. The bark is toasted before its steeped into water, effectively making a bark tea. That tea is then boiled with sugar into a syrup that is more earthy and nutty than sweet. After curing in the syrup, the bacon gets another dose of hickory when it’s smoked over whole hickory logs. The thick-cut slices are a little sticky from the syrup, with a rich, salty flavor.
The bacon is perfect for BLTs and burgers, or cut the slices into chunky lardons for pastas and stews.