A guy I know moved here from Croatia with basically nothing but the clothes on his back. He told me that he was really used to eating the Croatian equivalent of prosciutto and really missed it, so for the first few years while he was dirt poor he would regularly buy and eat “raw” bacon. He claims that it is in fact cooked due to the smoking, and also that it was pretty tasty. That was 30 years ago and he’s still very much alive, so perhaps he was right on the first point. I will certainly not be personally verifying the second bit!
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My roommate in college used to add an uncooked piece of streaky bacon to her instant ramen. Have not tried it.
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true. haha
Same! We had an exchange student from Slovakia about 15 years ago. One morning while I was cooking some bacon, she cruised through the kitchen and asked if she could have some. I told her to help herself, assuming she’d take a piece from the platter of cooked bacon, but she started to peel off a raw slice and nearly had it in her mouth when I freaked! My reaction made her panic, and while she insisted she did it all the time at home (in Bratislava), my insistence convinced her not to do it that day.
I don’t know if American bacon is any different from what she was used to. I had never heard of such a thing up to that point, and not since, either, until just now.
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Yum
Nothing quite like parboiled bacon swimming in over salted MSG “soup”.
Sign me up.
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4 to 4.5 for me. I like bacon many ways, but not sweet applications like covered in chocolate or on doughnuts or candied. Not even slathered in maple syrup.
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OMG.
Is all I can say.
I just wouldn’t find raw bacon particularly pleasant, and certainly not anything like any prosciutto I’ve ever had. I’d find the excessive raw fat offputting.
And I’m not even bothered by eating raw minced pork (Mett).
Number 4 for me!
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Immigrants who come to the U.S. do all sorts of interesting things with the food they find in the grocery stores.
I knew one Filipino family when I was in grade school that accidentally bought canned cat food to make lumpia, in part because they couldn’t read the label correctly.
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I cut everything up, including the toast, douse it with Tabasco and use fork to get everything in each bite.
Me either, but when Niki saw the slab of bacon waiting to be cooked, her eyes lit up. I thought she was excited at the prospect of the finished product, but no, she wanted a raw slice.
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Always finger food for “American” bacon. And I don’t like shatteringly crisp, but I despise flabby floppy bacon and will only eat the portion that is actually cooked.
But if it’s more like what @Harters said, then definitely knife and fork.
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I make that perfect bacon in the pan, but it does take vigilance and a lot of flipping.
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That’s kind of interesting. Most Filipinos that come to the US have a fair ability to speak, read, and write English, eben ip it souns a leetle like dees. Not all, of course. I went to a high school that probably was 20% Filipino, and many of my classmates had grandparents who lived with them who spoke little to no English.
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I spent a summer in Graz, Austria many years ago, and we went on a little day trip to a winery just over the border in Slovenia. They served the most amazing porky spread with bread, which I later learned was basically just ground-up raw bacon. I’ve never been brave enough to make it myself at home but damn it was good!
ETA: Today I learned it is called Zaseka (Bohinjska Zaseka)
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My bacon is digital.
I was just going to mention that I remember Bourdain eating raw pork in a Kolsch bar in Germany and liking it. I think the dish he ate was Mett, and I just looked it up and it also known as Hackepeter. My ex-GF’s Dad was Polish and spent time in the 1960’s in the Netherlands and Germany and he used to eat raw pork as his wife was preparing it for the oven. Loved it. Or he did it to gross his family out. Could be either of them.
Not sure if Poland has a history of raw pork dishes, so I think it might have been from his time near Eindhoven.
But bacon is definitely a finger food in nearly all venues. If it was served in a banquet or fine dining environment, maybe use a knife and fork but I have never seen bacon served in that type of a meal.
It’s absolutely delish, so maybe he just loved it 
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