I have no horse in this race myself but i’m still mystified by the british bacon butty phenomenon- I’m actually surprised it isn’t more popular here in the US
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Me too. It just seems like a great way to ruin a nice piece of bacon. I mean, I understand it’s something you probably had to grow up with - but this is a sandwich invented by urban people who never encountered a vegetable - more precisely urban POOR people - my Brit-expat friends talk about using margarine rather than butter.
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I love bacon. And, I LOVE butter. But the two alone sharing a crusty roll gives me the shivers!
Depression food = chip butty.
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Well, you have to remember it isn’t an American style bacon, but a smoked pork loin style UK bacon. In that context the butty makes a bit more sense. No real amount of fat on the meat compared to US bacon, just thin sliced, fried, smoked pork loin and butter, and/or HP sauce, ketchup, or other condiment.
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Thank you for your explanation, Jonathon.
I don’t know if anyone else here has actually had an English style Bacon Buttie made with real Wiltshire Bacon, but those things are freaking delicious:
Wiltshire bacon is actually more like a smoked thin sliced tenderloin that they fry up. Done correctly like this on a toasted fresh roll it is so simple and so good.
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The closest thing in this country is Canadian bacon, but it’s not the same. The cure on a real English country bacon is something else.
It would also be like thin sliced Virginia ham fried and piled high on a thickly buttered roll.
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Aha. Then maybe that makes more sense that it’s not a “thing” here.
I’m more of a mushroom bacon kinda girl myself, thinking my favorite serious eats version would make a killer sandwich a la bacon butty style
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That makes sense, though I think I’d still prefer to skip everything but the bacon.
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By the way that has more to do with the strength of the Unilever Marketing Dept than anything else over there.
Europeans eat a lot of sandwiches, bread and toast. On the continent it’s usually the morning and evening meal.
They need some grease to make that bread slide down, and Unilever has immense marketing budgets to make people think hydrogenated veg fat is healthier than dairy.
I tend to think the main advantage for most Euros is that you can spread margarine right out of the fridge, because people are too lazy to cut the amount they need the night before so the butter is soft in the morning when you need to spread it.
It certainly has nothing to do with taste, cause all their spreads taste terrible.
Hey DoobieWah, you listed your favorite bacon sandwich as a BLTAO. (I personally think O in a BLT is too distracting, A is good)
What is your preferred level of baconness in said sandwich? Piled high?
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Something about that phrase…
It’s definitely not the same as the restaurant. The restaurant bacon is a nearly a 1/2 inch thick cooked. The supermarket suff is sliced thin like regular bacon.
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Let me get this straight, this is just bacon, butter, and HP on a roll? I have no access to real Wlitshire bacon but I’m about to make this with some regular bacon. Sounds awesome.
Is there anything you haven’t eaten?
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No way in hell is it the thickness of regular, or even so called thick cut commercial bacon.
I just measured the thickness with a mechanics ruler just now and on average what looks like 3/8-1/2" thick in the package, uncooked. Five slices in a 12 oz. package. That’s 2.4 oz. per slice, and it’s not water cured, so there is negligible shrinkage when cooked.
How often do you buy it? I go through a package each weekend, and usually another during the week.
In the restaurant they cut it themselves, and I have seen it be on average around 1/2-5/8" thick, cooked. Never measured it on my plate since I don’t tend to carry a ruler around when I go out to eat. But after many years of woodworking and contracting I can eyeball pretty good.
The flavor profile and texture is the same as the restaurant. I had both in the same day a few weeks ago.
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I am sadly mistaken on this one! I could have sworn I checked out a package at the market and it looked like regular thick bacon to me. I just looked up some pics and it indeed does look significantly thicker. It still doesn’t look nearly as epic as the restaurant version though.
When I’m interested in a luger experience I buy bacon from the deli section and ask to have it sliced to half inch pieces. But I will definitely have to try the Luger bacon one day. Thanks for the correction!
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As regards bacon sandwiches, English style, HP sauce is optional. As is Coleman’s mustard, which some people really like on them.
As regards eating everything, I’ve travelled a lot on business, especially in my younger days, and I lived overseas for a long time and have relatives and in-laws there.
And I’m really interested in food. I like to eat well and if I see something interesting on someone’s plate next to me or in their kitchen I gotta get me some of that.
But there is a lot of stuff I would still like to try.
I’ve never been to Korea for example, but I would love to go there. I can’t resist a Korean restaurant in this country, but I’m sure there is lots of stuff over there that is much better.
And in Indonesia I’ve only been to Jakarta and Bali. That’s enough to know that there is plenty else out there. There are like 70 islands, and I’m sure each one has different local twists.
Hell, you can’t go 50 miles in Germany or France without a major local cuisine shift. Imagine what happens with Island geography.
Two layers, thick or thin cut bacon.
And just a very thin slice of onion.
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Well, there is that of course - that would be the reason my mom had us eating margarine rather than butter in California in the 1960’s - she thought it was more healthful. But I’m talking more about people eating margarine because they couldn’t afford butter - the kind of diet George Orwell talked about in The Road to Wigan Pier in the 1930’s, even before war rationing. My friends were growing up in the 60’s and 70’s but their families were still eating this way - partially poverty but maybe also because that’s what they were used to.
